Teen Accused of Deadly California Shooting Had Already Been Given a Second Chance – Bearing Arms

A fatal shooting at a Spirit Halloween store in Fairfield, California has once again exposed the folly of the state’s draconian gun control laws and its soft-on-crime attitude towards juvenile offenders. 

17-year-old Monte Smith is now facing a variety of charges including murder for the shooting that left six people injured and a 31-year-old mother of four dead. As Fox News reports, Smith is no stranger to law enforcement. 

Smith had already been arrested in another shooting before the deadly attack at Spirit Halloween, according to Fairfield police. That case involved gunfire in a local high school parking lot after school hours in 2025. He received a sentence and was later released, the department said.

“It’s time for change in California,” Fairfield Police Chief Dan Marshall said, according to KTVU. “I don’t know how many more people have to die at the hands of youth. Hopefully we’ve had plenty enough.”

That previous shooting was just last year, and yet Smith had already completed his sentence and was free? I’m not all that surprised that he allegedly picked up another gun and committed an even more heinous crime. After all, the state of California essentially told him the first shooting was no big deal when the juvenile justice system gave him a slap on the wrist. 

Chief Marshall is right that it’s time for change in California, but he’s kidding himself if he thinks that the Democrat majorities in Sacramento are suddenly going to crack down on juvenile crime. After all, California lawmakers have been far more interested in making it harder for law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights than in making sure violent offenders face serious consequences for their actions.

According to Fairfield police, Smith was convicted of shooting at an occupied vehicle in a high school parking lot last September. He spent just a few months in juvenile hall before being released, apparently deemed rehabilitated and ready to return to society. Now he’s accused of murdering Constance Hages and her unborn child, leaving four children without their mother, and wounding six other people. Prosecutors are seeking to try Smith as an adult this time around, but even that isn’t guaranteed. Under California law, a judge must first agree that he isn’t amenable to rehabilitation within the juvenile justice system.

Look, I’m all for giving young offenders an opportunity to turn their lives around, but that doesn’t mean pretending that shooting at an occupied vehicle is some youthful indiscretion on par with shoplifting or vandalism. Smith was essentially given a pass for his previous shooting, and before he even completed probation he now stands accused of shooting eight people, including Hages and her unborn child. 

California has already made it illegal for 17-year-olds to carry handguns in public, shoot at occupied vehicles, and murder innocent people. Adding another gun control law to the books wouldn’t have changed any of that. In fact, three of the charges that Smith is facing  are “felony assault with a semi-automatic weapon,” as if it really matters whether Smith allegedly shot his victims with a revolver or a semi-automatic pistol. 

What might have made a difference is a juvenile justice system that took Smith’s first violent offense seriously enough to keep him from having the opportunity to commit another.

Constance Hages and her family deserved that kind of protection. Instead, they’re the latest Californians to a terrible price for a system that puts far too much faith in a violent teenager’s rehabilitation and far too little emphasis on protecting the public from juvenile offenders… and allowing the public to protect themselves by exercising their Second Amendment rights.  

Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

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