Mass shooting rocks California neighborhood overnight as gunshots

Another 2 a.m. call in Hawthorne. Shots fired, screaming, then four people rushed to a hospital, three of them hit. That’s what early Thursday looked like near Crenshaw and Rosecrans. It’s a neighborhood where people live, where families were sleeping, and suddenly the street sounds like a war zone. The police are doing their job, again, but the same question keeps coming back: what is being done to stop this before it starts?

California’s answer is more gun laws on top of more gun laws. But the people doing this aren’t lining up for background checks. They’re not stopping to count magazine rounds. They’re out on a residential street at 2 a.m. looking to hurt someone. The only thing they fear is consequences. And in this state, under this district attorney, consequences have become a suggestion. Recidivism gets a smile and a diversion program. Violent criminals get back out before the victims’ bandages come off.

We are not safer because a law-abiding driver has a 10-day wait. We are safer when the person who pulls the trigger knows they’ll sit in a cell, not be processed and released. The left will tell you this shooting proves we need more restrictions on the honest, on the law-abiding. That's the opposite of the lesson. Every restriction on peaceful citizens does is make them less able to defend themselves when the next Hawthorne happens.

Our leaders in Sacramento and Washington should look at those three gunshot victims and ask who the shooter was, where he got his record, and why he wasn’t already locked up. That’s what America First means in practice. Protect the people who are hurt, don’t hamstring the ones who want to help. Until we do, we’ll keep getting the same phone calls at 2 a.m., and we’ll keep writing the same stories.