Sacramento Massacre: Blame Revolving-Door Prisons, Not Guns

Depicted: Sacramento Mayor’s ideal prison system, c. 2013, colorized

On April 3, two men killed six people in a late-night downtown shootout.

Naturally, the very first thing that the anti-gunners did was put on their dancin’ shoes and do a quick Charleston in the still-drying blood of the victims. Naturally, Biden blamed “ghost guns.” Naturally, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg blamed the “proliferation of assault weapons.” And, naturally, it quickly emerged that one of the perps was supposed to have been in prison for six more years and had been released over the objections of Sacramento’s DA office.

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today said revelations that one of two suspects being held in connection with the deadly mass shooting in Sacramento was released from prison less than two months ago shows the problem in California isn’t guns, it’s prison system rules that allowed the man to be on the streets.

Did you know that it’s really hard to do a mass shooting from a prison cell? Truth!

“Smiley Allen Martin has a criminal history dating back at least nine years,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “and he was doing a ten-year stretch for domestic violence and assault, yet thanks to the current credits system by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, here he was in Sacramento at 2 a.m. in the middle of mayhem. He’s now facing new charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and possession of a machine gun.

“Instead of Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and others calling for more gun control,” he added, “they should be demanding prison reform that keeps violent criminals behind bars instead of allowing early release. Politicians who support such policies are perpetuating a system that ultimately poses more of a real danger to society than their imagined fears about private gun ownership.”

Who possibly could have foreseen that Martin was a bad candidate for early release? (Everybody, that’s who.)

The Sacramento Bee is reporting that Martin has been in trouble with the law since 2013, when he was prosecuted for possession of a semiautomatic rifle and outlawed magazines, and then sentenced to “probation and county jail.” Less than a year later, he was arrested on robbery charges and sentenced to two years in prison. In 2016, after being paroled, he was back in trouble again, and the following year, he was arrested for the domestic violence and assault, and sent back to prison in January 2018 with the 10-year sentence. Yet he was released in February of this year, despite an objection last year by the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office.

“Violent criminals shouldn’t be back on the streets essentially unsupervised,” Gottlieb said, “especially when their earlier crimes included illegal gun possession. This is why the American people don’t support more gun control, and instead are buying guns for personal protection. They are realizing that when you trade your freedom for some sense of security, you ultimately wind up with neither.”

Here’s what the Sacramento District Attorney’s office said about Martin’s early release …

“In January of 2013, just six months after his eighteenth birthday, Inmate Martin was contacted by law enforcement officers,” the letter states. “Inmate Martin attempted to discard an assault rifle which he had concealed in his waistband under his clothing. “The rifle had a pistol grip and the capacity to accept a detachable magazine in front of the pistol grip. Inmate Martin was also found to be in possession of two fully loaded twenty-five round magazines for the assault weapon. Inmate Martin admitted to transporting the assault weapon and large capacity magazines to potential buyers. Inmate Martin was sentenced to probation and county jail.”

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How many federal firearms felonies can you count in that previous paragraph? That incident nine years ago includes three by my count … each one of them good for five years in federal prison. Martin may have been barely an adult at that time, but he was already racking up a rad rap sheet with the best of ’em, including engaging in the kind of illegal gun running that puts those firearms in the hands of prohibited persons. Instead, he was released over and over again to head back to the streets to offend.