In a move intended to exploit a national health crisis and worldwide pandemic (courtesy of the corrupt Communist Chinese Party), California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) issued an order that allowed county sheriffs to declare gun stores non-essential businesses. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alexander Villanueva, who has a far-leftist reputation for not playing well with other law officers (he hates ICE), doesn’t have any affection for the Second Amendment contained in the document he swore an oath to protect and defend—the U.S. Constitution.

The National Rifle Association (NRA), according to Fox News, doesn’t intend to allow this exploitation of a crisis to go down without a fight. Friday, the NRA filed a lawsuit in federal court, challenging Newsom and Villanueva’s anti-gun rights actions. Villanueva originally ordered gun stores shuttered but had to reverse himself when the county attorney said it probably wasn’t legal. Then, according to Bloomberg News, the gun rights-hating sheriff reversed his reversal and reordered gun stores re-shuttered after the governor gave him the okey-dokey to be a fascist.

As in New Jersey and other jurisdictions across the country, leftist politicians want people already feeling vulnerable to feel even more so. Shredding their oath to protect their citizens, these leftist officials yank away the people’s self-defense rights just when they feel they need it most. As I’ve said before, if you take away a person’s right to get the most efficient method of self-protection (including its modifications, repair, and ammunition), you’ve effectively taken away that person’s most efficient means of personal protection.

The NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) is joining other gun rights organizations, activists, and firearms businesses in the suit. Jason Ouimet, executive director of the NRA-ILA, issued a statement: “Municipalities who target lawful gun stores for closure aren’t promoting safety—by weaponizing their politics to disarm you and your loved ones, these shameless partisans are recklessly promoting a gun-control agenda that suffocates your self-defense rights when you need them most.”

Leftist public officials across the nation are not letting this serious crisis go to waste. They’re using it to infringe on Americans’ self-defense rights while at the same time they are releasing criminals from jails and prisons to prey on people the governor and sheriff would prefer can’t protect themselves. And they’ve also de-criminalized many crimes, so cops can’t enforce real offenses against real victims. The behavior by government officials is unconscionable, especially during a national emergency where Americans have a heightened concern for their and their families’ health and safety.

The impetus to disarm people at any time, never mind when they’re feeling most vulnerable, is obviously unethical, even immoral—if you think about it. But that’s not the way of these leftist political pirates, is it? If people stop to think objectively, critically, educate themselves about what the Second Amendment means and does, they will likely arrive at similar conclusions: that their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are secured by that one sacred right to self-defense. So, for the Left, they can never, ever stop to think about it—and they certainly don’t want you to.