Cauffiel: No Enforcement of the ‘Small Stuff’ Is Turning Karen Bass’s Los Angeles into a Third World Hellscape

August 20, 2026
8:41 pm

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The collapse of basic order in Los Angeles isn’t just a policy failure—it’s a deliberate experiment in selective enforcement that’s now bleeding into every corner of civic life, including the Second Amendment. When Mayor Karen Bass’s administration treats shoplifting, public drug use, and open encampments as “small stuff,” it signals to criminals that the rules are optional. That same discretionary mindset inevitably creeps into how police and prosecutors handle firearms cases: a lawful carrier who defends himself may suddenly find his gun confiscated while the actual predator walks, because the city has already decided that “quality of life” statutes are beneath its dignity to enforce. The result is a two-tier system where the law-abiding shrink their sphere of movement and the armed predator expands his. For the 2A community this is more than a quality-of-life story; it’s a live demonstration of why shall-issue carry and constitutional carry statutes matter. When local officials refuse to police the “small stuff,” they create the very conditions—street-level disorder, emboldened gangs, and skyrocketing smash-and-grabs—that make the right to bear arms not theoretical but daily necessity. California’s byzantine permitting regime already stacks the deck against ordinary citizens; when the same officials then look the other way on actual violence, they manufacture the predicate for further restrictions: “See, the guns aren’t making anyone safer.” The data, of course, points the other way: cities that prioritize enforcement of baseline statutes see measurable drops in violent crime, while those that treat armed self-defense as the problem rather than the symptom watch homicide counts climb. The deeper implication is that the right to keep and bear arms is only as robust as the surrounding rule of law. If Los Angeles continues to advertise that theft under $950 is effectively legal and that open-air drug markets are zoning decisions rather than crimes, the city is simultaneously advertising that the individual must become his own first responder. That is precisely why national reciprocity, permitless carry, and aggressive preemption of local nullification matter: they prevent one progressive municipality’s experiment in anarchy from disarming the law-abiding population it has already failed to protect.

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For the 2A community this is more than a quality-of-life story; it’s a live demonstration of why shall-issue carry and constitutional carry statutes matter. When local officials refuse to police the “small stuff,” they create the very conditions—street-level disorder, emboldened gangs, and skyrocketing smash-and-grabs—that make the right to bear arms not theoretical but daily necessity. California’s byzantine permitting regime already stacks the deck against ordinary citizens; when the same officials then look the other way on actual violence, they manufacture the predicate for further restrictions: “See, the guns aren’t making anyone safer.” The data, of course, points the other way: cities that prioritize enforcement of baseline statutes see measurable drops in violent crime, while those that treat armed self-defense as the problem rather than the symptom watch homicide counts climb.

The deeper implication is that the right to keep and bear arms is only as robust as the surrounding rule of law. If Los Angeles continues to advertise that theft under $950 is effectively legal and that open-air drug markets are zoning decisions rather than crimes, the city is simultaneously advertising that the individual must become his own first responder. That is precisely why national reciprocity, permitless carry, and aggressive preemption of local nullification matter: they prevent one progressive municipality’s experiment in anarchy from disarming the law-abiding population it has already failed to protect.

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