Eight months after podcaster Shawn Ryan gifted California Gov. Gavin Newsom a Sig Sauer P365-Xmacro pistol, the governor still hasn't taken possession of it. Not because he doesn't want it. Because his own laws are in the way.
Newsom filed his mandatory statement of economic interest on Monday and listed the pistol, noting it is "currently held by a licensed firearm dealer, and not in the Governor's possession." The gun has been sitting with a licensed dealer in Tennessee since July, waiting to be transferred to an authorized dealer in California, where the governor of the state would then have to navigate the very bureaucratic gauntlet he built for every other Californian.
That gauntlet includes a 10-day waiting period, a Firearm Safety Certificate test requiring at least a 75% score, and whatever additional processing the state's labyrinthine regulations demand, the NY Post reported. The man who signed those requirements into law is now subject to them. And apparently, they're enough of a hassle that even the governor hasn't bothered to complete the process.
Ryan, a conservative podcaster based in Tennessee, gave Newsom the Sig Sauer during a July interview. Newsom's on-air reaction was warm. "Brother, this is fabulous."
He followed that up with a claim that probably made every gun owner in his state do a double take:
"The last thing people would expect is that I respect this gift. I'm not anti-gun at all."
Not anti-gun at all. This is from the governor who has championed an 11% excise tax on firearms and ammunition, signed a first-ever ban on new Glock handguns, and pushed for a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would require age limits on gun purchases, mandatory background checks, waiting periods, and a ban on assault weapon ownership. No other state has gotten on board with that amendment idea, according to Cal Matters.
So Newsom isn't anti-gun. He just wants to tax them, ban popular models, constitutionally restrict their purchase, and make the transfer process so cumbersome that even he can't finish it in eight months.
Adam Wilson, the director of legislative affairs at Gun Owners of California, put it plainly in remarks to Cal Matters:
"You would think that maybe he would take a look at that and think 'Maybe I should do some things differently here, because it's causing (me) difficulty.'"
Wilson wasn't done.
"But he doesn't understand that, because he doesn't care about what regular gun owners are going through."
That's the core of it. Newsom designed a system that treats every firearms transaction as a potential threat to public safety. Layers of paperwork, waiting periods, testing, dealer-to-dealer transfers across state lines. For millions of law-abiding Californians, this isn't an abstraction. It's the price of exercising a constitutional right in a state whose leadership views that right with suspicion.
But when the system lands on the governor's desk, it becomes a curiosity, a footnote on a financial disclosure form. He can afford to wait eight months. He has a security detail. The single mother in Fresno who needs a firearm for home defense doesn't have the same luxury.
This story is small in the grand scheme. One handgun, one politician, one disclosure form. But it's a perfect miniature of how progressive governance works in practice. The people who design the restrictions never feel them. They live behind the walls they build for everyone else.
Newsom didn't set out to prove that California's gun laws are unreasonable. He didn't need to. He just tried to accept a gift and ran headfirst into his own regulatory architecture. The system worked exactly as designed: it made a lawful firearms transfer so tedious that even the most powerful man in the state hasn't completed it.
Consider what that means for everyone else. If the governor of California, with all the resources and staff at his disposal, can't navigate a simple handgun transfer in eight months, what hope does an ordinary citizen have of the process being anything less than deliberately discouraging? That's not a bug. That's the feature.
Newsom says he's not anti-gun. His laws say otherwise. And now, so does his own filing cabinet.