{"id":79567,"date":"2022-04-04T12:18:03","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T17:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=79567"},"modified":"2022-04-04T12:18:03","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T17:18:03","slug":"79567","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=79567","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Question O’ The Day. I think the answer just might be ‘Reverse Gears!<\/em>‘<\/p>\n

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California has toughest U.S. gun laws. After Sacramento shooting, what else can lawmakers do?<\/a><\/p>\n

They\u2019ve banned high-capacity magazines and cracked down on assault weapons. They\u2019ve made it so Californians have to pass a background check to purchase a gun and ammunition. They\u2019ve prohibited buyers from having ammo or \u201cghost\u201d gun parts shipped directly to their homes.<\/div>\n
When it comes to gun laws, California\u2019s legislators have passed some of the most stringent regulations in the country, checking off nearly every box on national gun control advocates\u2019 wishlist.<\/div>\n
A mass shooting early Sunday that left\u00a0six dead and 12 wounded<\/a>\u00a0just a block from the Capitol \u2014 the very building where these laws were enacted \u2014 immediately prompted new calls for legislation to curb gun violence, from California elected officials and gun-control advocates across the nation.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe scourge of gun violence continues to be a crisis in our country, and we must resolve to bring an end to this carnage,\u201d Gov. Gavin Newsom, who\u2019s already signed 15 gun-control laws, said Sunday in a prepared statement.<\/div>\n
The call for action on the federal level reached as far as the White House.<\/div>\n
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\u201cBan ghost guns,\u201d President Joe Biden said,\u00a0expressing his sorrow for the Sacramento victims<\/a>. \u201cRequire background checks for all gun sales. Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Repeal gun manufacturers\u2019 immunity from liability.\u201d<\/div>\n
But what else can California\u2019s lawmakers do to restrict guns that they haven\u2019t already done \u2014 and have their laws survive the inevitable challenge by Second Amendment advocates?<\/div>\n
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Even before Sunday\u2019s shooting, Democratic legislators planned to do more. One new bill, introduced by state Senator Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, would give citizens\u00a0the \u201cprivate right of action\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to sue gun manufacturers and suppliers. The bill, SB 1327, is modeled after an anti-abortion law enacted in Texas.<\/div>\n
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State Sen. David Min, D-Irvine, introduced Senate Bill 915, which would prohibit the sale of firearms or ammunition on state property, effectively ending gun shows on 73 state-owned fairgrounds. Previous efforts on a blanket-ban on gun shows at fairgrounds have failed.<\/div>\n
\u201cThese are all practical actions we can take today to stop gun violence,\u201d Hertzberg said Sunday.<\/div>\n
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But the fact is, the recent legislation pending in California is relatively modest compared to some of the sweeping reforms that gun-control advocates are demanding in other states and on the federal level \u2014 simply because most of the toughest curbs are already part of California law.<\/div>\n
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Among other things, nationwide advocates are seeking to have all private-party gun sales subjected to federal background checks, which they call the \u201cgun-show loophole.\u201d They also want to see the nationwide assault-weapons ban, which expired in 2004, revived. Both of those laws are in effect in California.<\/div>\n
Advocates for gun owners say there isn\u2019t much else California can do, given the protections for gun ownership enshrined in the Bill of Rights.<\/div>\n
\u201cHere in California, we have done everything we could possibly do to control guns,\u201d said Sam Paredes, who runs the Sacramento-area organization\u00a0Gun Owners of California.\u00a0<\/a>\u201cEverything short of banning (guns), and they know they can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/div>\n
Paredes said lawmakers are gliding over the real issues that drive gun violence.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIs it mental? Economic? Medical? What is it? They won\u2019t go there. Their knee-jerk reaction is to go after guns,\u201d Paredes said.<\/div>\n
California has\u00a0107 different gun-control laws<\/a>\u00a0on the books, more than any other state, according to a database maintained by the Boston University School of Public Health. Massachusetts is No. 2 at 103.<\/div>\n
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Still, lawmakers say Sunday\u2019s bloodbath near the Capitol shows there\u2019s more work to do in a state where an\u00a0estimated 7 million people live in a home<\/a>\u00a0where guns are present.<\/div>\n
\u201cWhat a sickening, senseless loss of life,\u201d said California Assembly Speaker Anthony\u00a0Rendon on Twitter<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s an epidemic, and we need\u00a0#GunReform<\/a>\u00a0now to stop it.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, speaking a block from the scene, said, \u201cThoughts and prayers are not nearly enough …. This senseless epidemic of gun violence must be addressed.\u201d He called for tougher laws on assault weapons, even though it wasn\u2019t immediately clear what type of gun was used Sunday.<\/div>\n
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CALIFORNIA GUN LAW CONTESTED IN COURT<\/h3>\n
The 15 gun-control laws Newsom has signed as governor cover an array of restrictions, broad and narrow. AB 1669 requires anyone selling ammo at a gun show to be licensed. SB 61 extends the waiting period on multiple handgun purchases to include semiautomatic rifles. And AB 893 specifically bans any weapons or ammo sales at the state-owned Del Mar Fairgrounds in the San Diego area.<\/div>\n
Even if lawmakers do pass more reforms, it\u2019s not a sure bet they\u2019ll survive a legal challenge. A gun-control law Newsom championed as lieutenant governor spent years in legal limbo before finally being upheld by the courts.<\/div>\n
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California voters in 2016 approved Proposition 63, a sweeping package of gun control reforms that included the state\u2019s ban on possessing so-called \u201chigh-capacity\u201d magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. The Newsom-supported initiative also included one of the nation\u2019s first background checks for ammunition purchases.<\/div>\n
The law has since been challenged in court, and gun-rights advocates scored some early victories. In August 2020, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the magazine ban was unconstitutional.<\/div>\n
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However, last December the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the\u00a0law was constitutional, after all.<\/a>\u00a0Gun-rights advocates said they were likely to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/div>\n
The state\u2019s ammunition background check process has been challenged as well, and a federal judge in San Diego ruled it was unconstitutional.<\/div>\n
The laws remain in effect as the cases make their way through the courts.<\/div>\n
Similarly, California\u2019s efforts to close loopholes around assault weapons have faced legal scrutiny.<\/div>\n
California banned assault weapons three decades ago. To get around the prohibition, some gun manufacturers began building rifles with \u201cbullet buttons,\u201d devices that allow a gun\u2019s ammunition magazine to quickly disengage with the use of a small tool, usually the tip of a bullet.<\/div>\n
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In 2016, lawmakers passed a law that banned selling those weapons, but it allowed those who already possessed them to keep them so long as they registered their guns online with the California Department of Justice.<\/div>\n
Gun rights advocates sued, and last year, the California Attorney General\u2019s office signed a settlement agreement in federal court admitting the agency gun-registration website was so poorly designed that potentially thousands of Californians were unable to register their assault weapons and comply with state law.<\/div>\n
Under the terms of the federal settlement, the state Department of Justice was required to notify each district attorney and law enforcement agency to put on hold \u201call pending investigations and prosecutions\u201d for those suspected of failing to register their assault weapons. The settlement gave those seeking to register their weapons more time to do so.<\/div>\n

MASS SHOOTINGS IN CALIFORNIA DESPITE GUN LAWS<\/h3>\n
California has discovered that its own gun laws are rendered meaningless when someone brings in a weapon from out of state.<\/div>\n
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In July 2019, three people were\u00a0shot dead at the famous Gilroy Garlic Festival<\/a>\u00a0by a man wielding an assault rifle he\u2019d purchased legally in Nevada just three weeks earlier.<\/div>\n
At the same time, recent acts of mass violence show that those intent on committing violence can get around other laws that are supported, at least in principle, by both gun-control and Second Amendment advocates, such as California\u2019s stringent prohibition on people with violent histories being able to acquire guns and ammo.<\/div>\n
In late February, 39-year-old David Mora shot his three daughters to death in a Sacramento-area church, along with a man who was supervising a court-ordered visit with the children. Mora then shot and killed himself.<\/div>\n
Mora had\u00a0a domestic violence restraining order\u00a0<\/a>that should have prevented him from possessing a gun.<\/div>\n
It was among several other recent high-profile shootings in California from people prohibited from having firearms.<\/div>\n
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On Feb. 2 \u2014 less than four weeks before the church shooting \u2014 a 21-year-old passenger on a\u00a0Greyhound bus opened fire on passengers<\/a>\u00a0in Oroville, killing one person and wounding at least four others, including an 11-year-old girl. The suspect, Asaahdi Elijah Coleman of Sacramento, had a lengthy rap sheet that should have stopped him from owning a gun.<\/div>\n
The man accused last year of killing four people and wounding the mother of a third grader who died in her arms in the Southern California city of Orange had a six-year-old battery conviction that should have prohibited him from possessing firearms.<\/div>\n
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In 2020, a Madera man fatally shot his estranged wife in front of the couple\u2019s three children. The woman had told law enforcement her husband had a gun, and she detailed the abuse that had gone on. The shooter, however, denied having firearms, and\u00a0there was little apparent follow-up<\/a>.<\/div>\n
And in November 2017, a\u00a0deranged gunman named Kevin Janson Neal\u00a0<\/a>went on a shooting binge through the tiny community of Rancho Tehama, firing indiscriminately. The man killed five people in the rampage and wounded dozens more, including several students at an elementary school, before he shot himself after a gunfight with deputies.<\/div>\n
He, too, was prohibited from possessing weapons but had used a ghost gun \u2014 a firearm he built himself.<\/div>\n
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Experts say that even in a state such as California where support for gun control is strong, it\u2019s always going to be difficult to prevent gun violence.<\/div>\n
The reality is there are millions of weapons in circulation, many of them off the books and easily obtained illegally.<\/div>\n
There also is no easy way for law enforcement officers to know someone has an unregistered gun.<\/div>\n
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\u201cYou\u2019re never going to completely stop mass shootings in a society that\u2019s awash in guns,\u201d Adam Winkler, a UCLA professor who studies gun access and the Second Amendment\u00a0told The Bee in February<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s just not going to happen.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question O’ The Day. I think the answer just might be ‘Reverse Gears!‘ California has toughest U.S. gun laws. After Sacramento shooting, what else can lawmakers do? They\u2019ve banned high-capacity magazines and cracked down on assault weapons. They\u2019ve made it so Californians have to pass a background check to purchase a gun and ammunition. They\u2019ve … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goobermint","category-rkba","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79568,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79567\/revisions\/79568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}