Monday Morning Bullpen: Budgets and Ghost Guns

Looks like this will probably be the last Bullpen this year to talk about the budget.

The City Council is set to vote to close the public hearing on Monday night and vote to adopt the FY23 budget.

This is the big ticket item on Monday’s council meeting. It’s set to pass.

This is the height of the city doing its business, and a lot of moving pieces go into the budget.

Kudos to all involved for pulling it off. Considering the impacts of the pandemic, a recovery budget can’t be an easy task.

The other interesting item that I am keeping an eye on is the move against ghost guns.

By now, most of you have probably heard about the unserialized weapons that can be made from kits.

Recently, Pasadena Police have been taking them off the streets in record numbers.

The rise of ghost guns is the fastest-growing gun safety problem facing our country. More than 14% of the firearms seized by the Pasadena Police Department have been unserialized, untraceable ghost guns in the last year. The number is trending closer to 16% for the current year. Disturbingly little is known about who sells ghost guns, who buys them, and how much they are used in crime.

As part of Monday’s consent calendar, the City Council will vote to make it a crime to possess the weapons.

The proposed ordinance would close a loophole in federal and state law to make unlawful the possession of narrowly defined “ghost guns” and “ghost gun kits,” according to a city staff report.

The loophole in federal and state law is that the kit itself is not regulated. Once pieces of the kit are drilled and machined, it becomes a receiver and should be regulated.

According to the staff report, most likely the person who assembled the kit will fail to register the fully functional firearm.

It will be interesting to see how many of the activists call in to support this item.

Way too many people are killed by people with guns, some statistics online say 30 Black people are killed by gun violence every day.

Of course it’s easy to scream Black Lives Matter when the police fire the fatal shot, but these Black Lives Matter too.

This one is a no-brainer, pass it.

This is a problem reaching pandemic levels at an alarming rate.

I was going to wait until tomorrow’s Gumbo column to talk elections, but somebody has to call this thing.

John J. Kennedy has been re-elected in District 3.

Kennedy still has 60% of the vote. That gap cannot be overcome in a two man race.

In District 7, unless Ciran Hadjian and Allen Shay can combine for bigger numbers, Jason Lyon is going to the City Council.

Yes they have been chipping away at the lead.

But, it works like this, at some point the second place candidate is no longer just running against the lead vote getter.

They’re also running against the math, and the math says the
challengers are running out of votes.

Not calling it yet, but it’s going to take a big leap in numbers to force a runoff.