Fabio Defends Right to Keep and Bear Arms

In Hollywood, advocating for gun rights is more shocking than gluten and cellulite. Actors decry private gun ownership in America as “a …. disgrace,” endorse Australian-style gun bans, and generally follow the same predictable script when it comes to increased gun control.

These celebs – many of whom profit handsomely by portraying graphic violence using guns – claim to “hate guns,” “don’t think we need guns in this country,” and describe the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms as a “problem.”

How refreshing, then, to hear someone in the entertainment industry discuss the Second Amendment with other than knee-jerk outrage.

Actor/spokesperson/professional hunk and recent naturalized U.S. citizen Fabio Lanzoni – better known for glossy locks than Glocks – spoke out about the importance of defending lawful gun ownership after his Los Angeles home was recently burglarized and many of his friends were robbed or mugged.

Unlike people elsewhere, Americans have the constitutional right to be armed against criminals, who “are always going to have every single weapon available to them.” Pointing to Europe, Italian-born Fabio had some cautionary advice. “Don’t you ever give up your guns. If people lose that right, forget about it. Politicians – they will take everything away from you. And then what are you going to do, protest with a rock? Because that’s what they do in Europe.” And the self-same politicians “don’t really have to care” about ordinary people and gun rights because the politicians “are protected. They have security.”

Unfortunately for Fabio and other Golden State residents, crime in California is on the rise. Besides an uptick in the violent crime rate for the state overall, one source indicates the violent crime rate in 2016 for the City of Los Angeles increased by nearly 60 percent since 2013, with both the homicide and property crime rates continuing to climb for the third year in a row.

Yet California continues to make it harder and harder for good people to defend themselves. The State has the most restrictive gun laws in America, mandating background checks and other restrictions on firearm transfers and sales, “assault weapon” and large capacity magazine bans, limits on handgun purchases, open carry prohibitions, and a restrictive concealed carry permitting law. For example, to qualify for the issuance of a concealed carry permit the applicant must satisfy a “good cause” requirement. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) interprets this to mean something more than a desire to carry for personal safety and requiring “convincing evidence of a clear and present danger to life or of great bodily injury to the applicant, his (or her) spouse, or dependent child, which cannot be adequately dealt with by existing law enforcement resources, and which danger cannot be reasonably avoided by alternative measures, and which danger would be significantly mitigated by the applicant’s carrying of a concealed firearm.”

A similar narrow, particularized “good cause” interpretation was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Peruta v. Calif., a case that the NRA and other groups are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review at this time. (The case is pending the Court’s decision to review and the NRA will post updates on this important case as they occur.)

Unlike his Hollywood compatriots, who mainly prefer to shame people for viewing firearms as something other than movie props, Fabio says he’ll be putting his rights to good use by joining the ranks of America’s gun owners.