The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

California’s Democrat supermajority legislature is doing its best to grab guns from law-abiding citizens through backdoor means. Two bills were introduced this session toward those ends: AB92 which prohibits persons from purchasing or possessing body armor if state law prohibits them from possessing a firearm, and AB301 which prohibits the purchase of body armor by, and the sale of body armor to any persons who are not employed in a specified eligible profession.

For AB301, the “specified eligible profession(s)” list includes movie actors, attorneys journalists, and any profession added by the DOJ. So, if California Attorney General Rob Bonta decides that politicians or clown car drivers (but I repeat myself) need to be added to the list, he’ll just green-light it and it’s done.

And movie actors before attorneys? Inevitable, as the entertainment industry gives Newsom more money than the plaintiffs bar.

The good news: these two pieces of legislation went before the Assembly Public Safety Committee on Monday, and then were quietly withdrawn.

NEW: California bills to limit body armor sales to people in "eligible professions" (AB-301) and increase the penalty for possessing unserialized gun to a felony (AB-97) have both been pulled from a committee hearing by their authors after receiving extremely critical analyses.

— Rob Romano (@2Aupdates) February 28, 2023

The idiot in the State House who wants to replace the idiot in the White House has been on several rants about “commonsense gun measures” and what he and AG Bonta plan to do about it. Governor Gavin Newsom uses his Twitter feed to tout supposed freedoms in California, like the right to mutilate children and murder babies even past birth. When not doing that, he trolls red state governors of whom he is jealous, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The rest of the time, he spouts unfounded nonsense about gun rights in other states, when he oversees a state where two back-to-back mass shootings led the news in recent weeks and the gun control laws currently on the books would have done nothing to change the tragic outcomes.

Nothing about this is surprising. Everything about this is infuriating.

The Second Amendment is becoming a suicide pact. Americans are being gunned down on our streets, in dance clubs, at work. And the @GOP don’t give a damn.

Time to act, Congress. pic.twitter.com/2PHImGcU3T

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 25, 2023

Permitless carry does not make you safer. States that allow concealed carry have higher gun violence rates.

Don’t believe the lies of the gun industry.

CA will continue to lead on common sense gun laws.

Tune in now. https://t.co/JctNjISvf8

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 1, 2023

John Lott, Jr. took to RealClearPolitics to point out this rank hypocrisy that is business as usual for Governor Hair Gel:

With the country’s strictest gun control laws, California probably shouldn’t hold itself out as a model for the rest of the country to follow. The periods after 2000, 2010, or 2020 show a consistent pattern: The per capita rate of mass public shootings in California is always greater than the rate for the rest of the country. The rate is also much higher than for Texas, which gun control groups give an “F” grade for its gun control laws. Since 2010, California’s mass public shooting rate per capita is 43% higher than for Texas and 29% higher than for the rest of the U.S. From 2020 on, California’s rate was 276% higher than Texas’ and 100% higher than the rest of the country.

But while California is moving to create more gun-free zones, the problem is that it has already been virtually impossible to get concealed handgun permits in the parts of California where the attacks occurred. In Los Angeles Country, where two of the attacks occurred, there is only one permit for every 5,660 adults. In San Mateo County, where the other attack occurred, there is one permit per every 24,630 adults. By comparison, there is one permit holder for every nine people in the 43 right-to-carry states.

Unsurprisingly, concealed handgun permit holders don’t stop mass public shootings in California.

In the inability to be able to carry a firearm, why would anyone not choose to use some other form of protection? A ban on body armor would do two things: increase underground and black market purchases of the product and result in more lives lost in the absence of any means of proper protection or defense.

This is business as usual in the no-longer-Golden State and reason No. 9,989 why citizens are fleeing.

Except for the authors of the bills, there were few arguments in support of these ridiculous body armor bans. AB92 author Assemblyman Damon Connolly evoked the Buffalo, New York mass shooting to craft his basis for the bill; an incident from another state that happened a year ago. Correlation and causation are not even in the same state, let alone the same planet.

In the arguments against AB92, the committee was presented with these inconvenient facts culled from an NPR piece about the increase of body armor purchases by civilians in the wake of New York’s ban on the product after the Buffalo mass shooting.

In recent years, body armor has been evolving from vests to other types of attire and is increasingly being purchased by civilians. (NPR. Sales of body armor are on the rise. Who’s buying and why? (hereafter NPR Body Armor Sales) (Jun. 14, 2022) <https://www.npr.org/2022/06/14/1103935711/body-armor-sales-increase-rise-mass-shootings-bans> [as of Feb. 22, 2023].) Body armor now takes the shape of covert bullet resistant T-shirts and even backpacks, although their protection ratings vary. (Ibid.) There are even body armor blazers and vests that have been tested and rated by the NIJ. (Vice. After Every Mass Shooting, Americans Turn to Bogotá’s ‘Bulletproof Tailor’ (Jan. 13, 2016.) <https://www.vice.com/en/article/nz7bbq/after-every-mass-shooting-americans-turn-to-bogotas-bulletproof-tailor> [as of Feb. 23, 2023].)

In support of AB301 are the usual suspects: Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and March for Our Lives Action Fund. The gist of their argument is that it’s a fashion accessory commonly worn by mass shooters, therefore it needs to be regulated and/or banned. In their opposition to AB301, Gun Owners of California sets that strawman argument aflame, laying out the constitutional right to protection upheld by United States Supreme Court decisions such as 2008’s Heller decision, and the more recent 2022 Bruen decision. While courts, particularly SCOTUS, have not specifically dealt with litigation surrounding body armor, according to these precedents, constitutional protection of the right to defense extends to the accessories that facilitate the act of defense as well as the actual firearm used for defense.

“The Court has held that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 582 (2008), and that this “Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States,” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 750 (2010). In this case, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massachusetts law prohibiting the possession of stun guns after examining “whether a stun gun is the type of weapon contemplated by Congress in 1789 as being protected by the Second Amendment.” 470 Mass. 774, 777, 26 N. E. 3d 688, 691 (2015).

“Magazines, ammunition, accessories, and body armor fall under the same protection.

“It’s important to note that this legislation would criminalize a significant number of people – including parents who have chosen to provide school backpacks with body armor panels for their children in order to provide some level of protection in the tragic event of a school shooting. Further, motorcycle enthusiasts often use articles of clothing constructed with body armor, which can offer significant protection in the case of an accident. Other protective garments are manufactured with body armor, including athletic wear, hats, and denim jeans…”

The analysis also discusses this fact that supports the arguments of the opposition.

The author’s stated reason for prohibiting body armor is that it has been and can be used to facilitate mass shootings. However, unlike firearms, body armor are an inherently defensive instrument.

California continues to bleed funds with the exodus of actual taxpaying residents and is facing a looming $22.5 billion budget deficit. The Attorney General watches as the state’s actions to institute more gun control are thwarted, and lawsuits brought by the citizens of California to protect their 2A rights are upheld. They all know they would be fighting a losing battle and spending more money that they don’t have. It is apparent that the choice of the Public Safety Committee to withdraw the bills is less about necessity and more about self-preservation.