Some things in life are certain: death, taxes, and Texans owning guns.

The fact that people living in the Lone Star state are packing is only a surprise to those in the Leftmedia. The Washington Post, in particular, seems to make a big deal out of something everybody already knows.

Reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske states the obvious, writing: “Neighbors tuck guns into bedside tables, cars and trucks. They take guns fishing, to church, the park, the pool, the gym, the movies — even to protests at the state Capitol. The convention center hosts gun shows where shoppers peruse AR-15s and high-capacity magazines outlawed in other states. Texas billboards offer an endless stream of advertisements for ammunition, silencers and other accessories.”

She could have mentioned that the Earth is round, or that the sun sets in the west every evening.

“It has been legal here to openly carry long guns like rifles for generations,” Fiske adds. “But Texas’s gun-friendly attitude isn’t just a relic of the Old West and ranching: Many restrictions on handguns were loosened only recently. Two years ago, state lawmakers gave those 21 and older the right to carry handguns without a permit; in 2015, they gave those with concealed handgun permits the right to carry on public college campuses.”

Sounds good to us. And many other Americans agree, as they continue to leave states like California in droves. Nothing like protecting our right to self-defense to get people packing their bags.

But Cali still doesn’t get it.

Governor Gavin Newsom “has made gun control a signature issue as he has built more of a national profile in the past year,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “He is pursuing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would raise the minimum age to buy a gun to 21, ban the sale of guns classified as assault weapons, and institute universal background checks to purchase a firearm. California legislators recently passed a resolution calling for a constitutional convention to introduce that amendment.”

But they’re not stopping there.

The California legislature recently voted in favor of an excise tax on gun purchases and ammo. The 11% tax would be added on top of the current federal 10% tax, which is used for hunter education and school safety programs. Law enforcement officials would be exempt, as would businesses with less than $5,000 in sales, reports the Journal. Newsom signed the bill into law on Tuesday.

What’s lost in the mix is that California has more than a hundred gun laws, and they all target people who aren’t a threat to anyone.

“The state has embraced its role as the Democratic ideal,” writes the Washington Examiner’s Zachary Faria, “and has obsessively tried to impose a gun control agenda focused only on law-abiding gun owners, never on criminals. For example, the state has softened the sentencing enhancements for gang members, who drive the gun violence problem in California and across the nation. In Los Angeles, gun-crime enhancements have also been thrown out the window.”

It’s clear that Democrats across the country aren’t interested in criminals with guns. They’re going after law-abiding citizens who want to defend themselves against those same criminals.

Unfortunately for those gun-grabbing Democrats, they’re bucking a trend that’s moving in the other direction. Twenty-seven states now have permitless carry on the books.

On the legal front, the tide seems to be turning against gun bans. After dim-witted New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham enacted an order banning all guns in public, a federal judge blocked it. And just last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a New York law against concealed weapons by ruling that citizens are permitted to carry guns outside the home.

The reality that Texans like their guns shouldn’t be national news, but Democrats are all about distracting and demonizing. If California, New York, and other gun-grabbing states took fighting crime as seriously as they fight our constitutional rights, their own citizens would be safer.