From: David Belluomini

To: Mass Violence Prevention and Community Safety Committee, Duty 1 Submission

I write my comments as a retired California Police Captain and now a proud resident of Texas. My law enforcement experience spans over 30 years at various agencies. I’ve earned both a Bachelors and Master’s Degree in Criminology and I’m a graduate of the California POST Command College. My assignments have varied, but the focus of my career has involved Community and Problem Oriented Policing. California was my home for most of my life; we still have friends and family there, so I always want the very best for the state. But overtime I found that the state did not want the very best for me or those I care about; and that hasn’t changed, especially over the past 10 years. California has gone off the rails with window dressing their mismanagement, their outrageous taxes, identity politics, gang violence and burdensome legislation and regulations.

It’s instructive to compare my California experience to what I see happening in Texas; and it’s not good. As I prepare this submission, the California Legislature is proposing over a dozen anti-police legislative items under the guise of “police reform”. That’s not a surprise because the California legislature is given to massive over reaction to whatever the left leaning winds blow into Sacramento. What’s especially important to note, however, is that many of the same legislators making the anti-police proposals are some of the same legislators that have crammed gun control legislation down the throats of law abiding Californians for years. Many of the gun control items presented to this committee were influenced by, or cobbled in the very same legislative backrooms of the California Capitol, with the very same gun control lobbyist groups making submissions to this committee.

These very same politicians would say that law abiding Californians were too dangerous, too untrained or just too stupid for self-defense or the recreational shooting sports. They maintained you should wait for the police when a life threatening event was in progress instead of defending yourself, but they now want to neuter the police by cuts to training and special units, by encumbering response times through staff reductions and in general making the police and community more vulnerable to the criminal element.

For months we’ve seen what happens in large cities when the police are told to “stand down” during a riot, and also what occurs when low level social disorder is not only ignored, but celebrated as new form of victimhood. As a local example, the political leadership of the City of Austin has been preparing itself a front row seat to this madness for some time now, and doing it with a smile on their face with their latest police defunding and “reimagining” scheme. Austin political leadership also is not shy about voicing their strong support for gun control. Police de-funders and gun controllers have much in common and it has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with leftist ideology and control.

Disarming citizens and neutering police are a perfect formula for mass violence and reduced community safety; this committee should take note.

My basic position and recommendation to this committee is that current laws at the state and national level are adequate to protect us. Gun control laws adopted by left leaning states are not about guns, but about control. They’re a political power grab and have never been about safety or even crime. These laws are never meant to remain as written, but are meant to be incrementally expanded, often without notice. The gun control logic goes like this; since gun control isn’t working, we must have more gun control. It only makes sense when you realize, as I did in California, that the long game for gun controllers is total civilian disarmament. Gun control changes the culture, safety, liberty and livability of a state into something you don’t want.

The following is my personal and professional opinion about the proposals and recommendations before this committee under duty 1:

1) Expanded Background Checks; simply put, expanded background checks can only work for gun controllers if there is a national gun registry to facilitate confiscation; expect that to be an incremental future addition to any “universal background check” legislation. The only reason to register anything with the government is to track it, tax it or confiscate it. And that is currently happening in many states. It should also be noted that, almost without exception, spree killers using firearms had undergone a background check. Reject universal background checks; they’re a Trojan horse leading to greater firearm restrictions and confiscation. 2) Red Flag Laws; another Trojan horse and a gun controllers dream. They’re unconstitutional and a limitless anti-second amendment platform that target legal gun ownership, not criminals. They lack due process through secret, one-sided ex parte hearings and have not been shown to impact crimes committed with firearms. It’s unclear even why an ex parte hearing is even necessary. A gun owner has to literally pay thousands of dollars to prove their innocence before a judge of uncertain ideology. These laws are also meant to be expanded incrementally. They are initially written to focus on “mental health” issues limited to family or the police as petitioners; that doesn’t last long. California now allows anyone having contact with a firearms owner at work or at school to initiate a red flag petition. Red flag laws are a fishing expedition made on a hunch, not probable cause. In fact, reasonable suspicion is the standard used for this insidious constitutional infringement, well below the standard for issuance of a search warrant. Potentially, a person’s computer could be seized, bank accounts reviewed, credit card accounts examined; all tools of a fishing expedition and on little to no evidence. An anti-gun neighbor could make a red flag complaint on the flimsiest of grounds and you can be sure risk averse judges and police offers will be prone to issue and serve them; especially in left leaning counties. Red flag law petitions are also finding their way into divorce proceeding and matters of child custody as a leveraged power play. And speech that people hate is also generating red flag petitions, often encroaching on the First Amendment. The bottom line is that if you wanted a mechanism to promote police and/or government abuse, and give aid and comfort to your enemies, then red flag laws are for you. In the category of, “academia is a biased fraud”; not long ago, the University of California issued a ridiculous and biased study on California’s red flag law. Most of the serious cases cited were criminal arrests where guns were taken incident to the arrest; the red flag law was unnecessary, but was added for cosmetic effect and to falsely create an appearance of necessity and that of “saving lives”. It should also be noted that the California legislature grants the University of California millions of dollars a year to act as their gun control propaganda machine. 3) Expanding categories of prohibited persons that can own or possess a firearm is an ever growing form of gun control and should be rejected. Currently, the State of California has 14 felony categories and five misdemeanor categories where a person loses their right to own or possess a firearm for life. They have 43 misdemeanor categories where a person loses their right to bear arms for 10 years and one category where they lose this right for five years. These categories have especially expanded in laws related to domestic violence where the elements of this crime have been expanded greatly for easier violation, for males and females alike. You see, once gun control starts, it never stops. 4) California is awash with “gun free zones”, and they’re as dangerous as they are tyrannical. They don’t “save lives” or make communities safer. A strong case can be made that gun free zones cost lives. Nearly all spree killers, everywhere in the world, choose gun free zones where the disarmed congregate and resistance is futile, this in order to elevate the body count. Texas should be making efforts to eliminate gun free zones as much as possible; killers don’t respect them and law abiding gun owners shouldn’t have to be subjected to them. 5) Constitutional Carry; for the better part of forty years I’ve been a licensed concealed carrier and hadn’t given much thought to constitutional or permit less carry. But I’ve come to support it because it’s a step in the right direction to strengthen Texans Second Amendment rights and makes clear that gun control is not the answer to saving lives.

California has not become a safer or better place because of its relentless efforts to manage its citizens; just the opposite is true. Many fellow Californians have come to Texas as myself for all its benefits, but they don’t understand what makes Texas special and they want to make it more politically familiar; to them gun control is familiar. Please reject their folly and keep Texas, Texas. Irreparable harm will otherwise result.