A timely plunge into the danger zone

Gavin Newsom’s big push for a strict gun-control measure on the 2016 ballot wasn’t even close to his most daring policy move. After all, this is the former San Francisco mayor who in 2004 opened City Hall to same-sex marriages in open defiance of state law. This is the lieutenant governor who in 2013 who became the only statewide elected official to advocate for the legalization of recreational marijuana.

This is a politician who challenges the status quo — which, in all three cases, includes many of his fellow Democrats — with a faith that time will vindicate him.

In the case of marriage equality, it took 11 years for the U.S. Supreme Court to validate his judgment on the constitutional question, and public support had turned to the point that it was barely a controversy. On marijuana, the jury is out, and may remain out for years.

In the case of gun control, Americans’ concern about the pervasiveness and firepower of guns surged within days of Newsom’s initiative announcement with the slaughter of nine at a community college in Roseburg, Ore. Then came the massacre of San Bernardino, with 14 killed and 22 wounded by a suspected terrorist couple wielding legally purchased semi-automatic weapons.

Gun control was suddenly back in the national spotlight. Yet Congress instantly reaffirmed its unwillingness to take on the gun lobby even on an issue with robust public support. The U.S. House and Senate rejected attempts last week to prevent suspected terrorists on the nofly list from purchasing firearms.

Once again, Newsom appeared to be ahead of the curve.

But, this time, he advanced cautiously. His official statement of condolences to the victims of San Bernardino on Dec. 2 honored them, and praised the first responders, but made no mention of his gun initiative. He bypassed a multitude of requests to appear on national TV.

His restraint was partly out of sensitivity to a community in mourning. It also was compelled by the daily lawenforcement intelligence he was reviewing — he was serving as acting governor, with Jerry Brown in Paris for the climate conference — that was rife with ambiguity. “Everyone’s got to be careful, including me,” he told himself.

Yet there was no escaping the prospect that San Bernardino would — and should — play into the debate on the November 2016 initiative. It would introduce the nation’s first point-of-sale background checks on the purchase of ammunition; as of today, there are no constraints on who can sell or buy bullets. Sellers would need to be licensed. The suspects in the San Bernardino terrorist attack were found to have stockpiled thousand of rounds.

It also would extend the state’s 1999 law prohibiting high-capacity magazines of more than 10 rounds to those that had been grandfathered under current law.

The initiative would require that gun owners report lost or stolen guns to law enforcement, and would accelerate the program for seizing guns from felons and others who are supposed to be blocked from having them.

It might seem like safe politics to focus on gun control in a heavily Democratic state. But the gun lobby has no small level of influence here. Most elements of the initiative have been “watered down or killed outright” in a Legislature ruled by Democrats, Newsom said.

Brown has at times served as a goaltender against gun-control bills, perhaps never more so than two years ago when he vetoed a measure that would have preventing the alteration of guns to easily switch out high-capacity magazines.

Newsom said he was confident that the gun lobby, which he said has “been able to dominate representative democracy,” would find it far tougher to intimidate the voters.

The former San Francisco mayor knows the gun lobby’s hardball tactics. Among the city ordinances he signed was a 2007 measure that required firearms owners to keep their weapons locked in safes or disabled by trigger locks. That law was tied up in court until the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it in June.

Newsom never paid a price in San Francisco, but his frontal advocacy of a statewide initiative that would impose the nation’s toughest gun restrictions could make him target of the National Rifle Association in his 2018 bid for governor.

“I will be an easy fundraising opportunity for them,” he said. “But I think we’re going to win, and in doing so, it’s going to put a lot of pressure on other states. It’s time to knock these guys down. There’s just too many lives lost, too much blood on their hands. I’m absolutely convinced ... we’re getting closer and closer to that tipping point.”

Time will tell if he’s right. It’s not his first, or most audacious, gamble on the trajectory of public opinion.