Category: California

“One of the mechanisms by which California’s laws produce their effect is [that] we have a substantially lower prevalence of firearm ownership in this state than many other states do,” [UC Davis’s Garen J.] Wintemute says. “There are fewer of those tools in circulation…and no surprise, they get used less.”

Studies show that suicides account for more than half of U.S. gun deaths; and not to mention the casualties caused by mass shootings in schools, churches, supermarkets, and other public places. Recently, California also introduced a law that allows gun violence victims to sue gun manufacturers for the damages their products cause.

“Violence is a very complex health and social problem. There is no easy fix… the one right thing to do is a lot of things at the same time,” Wintemute says. “So that if one intervention doesn’t stop a particular sort of case, maybe another one will. To do one thing in a complex system is to simply allow that system to adapt and continue to produce what it’s going to produce.”

— Andrew D. Johnson in California’s Answer to Gun Violence Could Be a Model for the Entire Country

FPC Statement to Concealed Carry Issuing Authorities: Obstructing the People’s Fundamental Right to an Effective Self-defense is not an Option.

Sacramento, CA –-(AmmoLand.com)- Firearms Policy Coalition issued the following statement in response to reports of multiple carry permit issuing authorities across the country refusing to comply with the Supreme Court’s opinion in NYSRPA v. Bruen, which held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right to carry firearms in public:

Quoting the plurality opinion from McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court held in Bruen that “[t]he constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.’”

To those authorities that process or issue permits to carry concealed weapons that are abrogating the People’s right to carry: Obstructing the People’s fundamental right to effective self-defense is not an option.

It doesn’t matter if you disagree with the recent United States Supreme Court opinion. It doesn’t matter if there are a lot of applicants. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel like spending time processing them. You are required to objectively process a carry permit application submitted to you without burdensome fees, delays, flaming hoops, and other games. The deluge of applications you’re now experiencing could have been avoided if you simply respected the People’s right to bear arms from the start and not treated it as a second-class right.

FPC refuses to stand idly by while the issuing authorities—who are often law enforcement agencies—delay and deny the People’s right to the peaceable conduct they are entitled to. Your agencies must know that FPC will utilize every available instrument to remedy this ongoing and historical wrong.

Individuals who want to Join the FPC Grassroots Army and support important pro-rights lawsuits and programs can sign up at JoinFPC.org. Individuals and organizations wanting to support charitable efforts to restore the Second Amendment and other natural rights can also make a tax-deductible donation to the FPC Action Foundation. For more on FPC’s lawsuits and other pro-Second Amendment initiatives, visit FPCLegal.org and follow FPC on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.

SACRAMENTO — On a Saturday night in December, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California was so frustrated by a Supreme Court decision allowing Texas residents to sue abortion providers that he went straight to social media to call for legislation allowing private citizens to enforce his own state’s gun laws.

It sounded so tit-for-tat that many Californians wondered if he was just trying to get a rise out of one of his favorite foils, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas. Others doubted he was serious because it would have meant embracing a bounty system of enforcement that he considered legally dubious.

Seven months later, Mr. Newsom is not only poised to sign the bill, but he has leaned harder than ever into his rhetoric against Republicans. He ran an ad this month in Florida attacking the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, a possible 2024 presidential candidate. He has rebuked other states for banning abortion and ripped the Supreme Court for its recent decisions overturning Roe v. Wade and giving Americans a broad right to arm themselves in public.

While he has repeatedly insisted that he has no intention of running for the White House in 2024, Mr. Newsom’s actions sometimes seem to belie his statements. The Florida ad — a $105,000 spot worth more in free publicity — turned heads in national political circles. So did his visit to Washington this month and his declarations this spring that fellow Democrats were too meekly responding to Republican moves.

“I think he realizes that Democrats are hungry for a hero,” said Kim Nalder, a political science professor at California State University, Sacramento. “He’s building a profile as an alternative on the left to this aggressive policymaking we’ve seen by Republicans in recent years.”

No piece of legislation better encapsulates Mr. Newsom’s fight-fire-with-fire attitude than the bill co-opting a Texas anti-abortion tactic to enforce California bans on assault weapons and ghost guns.

It aims to bury those who deal in banned guns in litigation. Awards of at least $10,000 per weapon, and legal fees, will be offered to plaintiffs who successfully sue anyone who imports, distributes, manufactures or sells assault-style weapons, .50-caliber rifles, guns without serial numbers or parts that can be used to build firearms that are banned in California.

“No one is saying you can’t have a gun,” said State Senator Bob Hertzberg, a veteran San Fernando Valley Democrat who was tapped by the governor to craft and shepherd the complex legislation. “We’re just saying there’s no constitutional right to an AR-15, a .50-caliber machine gun or a ghost gun with the serial number filed off.”

The bill is the capstone of a sweeping package of firearm restrictions that Mr. Newsom is signing this month. The bills include fresh limits on firearm advertising to minors; intensified restrictions on unregistered “ghost guns”; and a 10-year ban on firearm possession for those convicted of child abuse or elder abuse.

“It’s time for us to stand up,” Mr. Newsom said in late June after the court struck down a New York law, similar to California’s, that strictly limited “public carry” permits. He said then that California had anticipated the ruling and that it was revising state law in ways that would offset “this radicalized and politicized Supreme Court.” He had 16 gun bills heading to his desk, he said, and he planned to sign them all.

The California laws come as mass shootings have intensified pressure for action on gun violence, as death tolls have mounted this year from Buffalo to Uvalde, Texas. Last month, President Biden signed the most significant gun violence legislation to clear Congress in nearly three decades, expanding the background check system for gun buyers under 21 and setting aside millions of dollars so states to enact “red flag” laws that allow the authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from people who are deemed dangerous.

But the congressional response, limited by a powerful gun lobby and deep partisan polarization, has been a far cry from the comprehensive solutions that many gun violence researchers feel are needed. And the conservative 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court has signaled an inclination to not only preserve, but also further expand gun rights.

That has left states led by Democrats to seek their own solutions. The search has extended beyond gun violence policies as the court’s rulings have upended reproductive rights and placed L.G.B.T.Q. protections and other civil liberties at risk. Increasingly, the charge from the left has been led by Mr. Newsom, who has had political capital to spare since last year, when he crushed a Republican-led recall.

Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist who now teaches political science at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley, said that the governor’s motives were easy to deduce: Mr. Newsom believes his “California way” is a success, and using a national platform to call out Republicans helps rally constituents across the many media markets in his own immense state.

Also, Mr. Schnur said, “He is running for president.”

Mr. Newsom has said that he has “subzero interest” in the White House. “But just being seen as a player on the national stage serves him, even if he never runs,” Mr. Schnur said. “Mario Cuomo played that game for years.”

California’s gun laws are among America’s strictest, helping the state deliver one of the nation’s lowest rates of gun deaths. In 2020, the state’s rate of firearm mortality was about 40 percent lower than the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Public Policy Institute of California has determined that Californians are about 25 percent less likely to die in mass shootings, compared with residents of other states.

California’s gun policies, however, have been strained as conservative federal judges, many appointed by the Trump administration, have taken an increasingly hard line on Second Amendment rights.

The California gun bounty law is expected to face legal challenges that could ultimately land at the Supreme Court. The measure will not take effect until next year and includes a legal trigger that will automatically invalidate it if courts strike down its Texas underpinnings. The National Rifle Association and other gun advocates have argued that current state law already offers remedies for illegal activities by firearm manufacturers and dealers in California.

The same groups have argued from the start that the measure’s bounty scheme could — and would — restrict the Second Amendment, and the American Civil Liberties Union echoed their concerns.

“The problem with this bill is the same problem as the Texas anti-abortion law it mimics: It creates an end run around the essential function of the courts to ensure that constitutional rights are protected,” the A.C.L.U. said in a letter opposing California’s legislation. The group also charged that the legislation would “escalate an ‘arms race’” in creative legal attacks on politically sensitive issues including contraception, gender-affirming care and voting rights.

A recent N.R.A. legislative update said that on this and several other gun bills, they were “looking at all available options including litigation.”

In the meantime, Mr. Hertzberg said, Democrats will use all available tools.

“I don’t agree with the Supreme Court,” he said, “but if Texas is going to use this legal framework to harm women, then California is going to use it to save lives by taking illegal guns off the streets.”

Gun makers and dealers in California will be required to block firearms sales to anyone they have “reasonable cause to believe is at substantial risk” of using a gun illegally or of harming themselves or others, under a new law that Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday that he had signed.

It’s a subjective requirement that goes farther than current background checks or prohibitions on selling guns to people prohibited from owning them.

The regulation is part of the new law creating a good conduct code for gun makers and dealers that also allows anyone who suffers harm from violations to sue.

The bill was one of more than a dozen adding to California’s already strict gun regulations that were sent to Newsom, a Democrat, by state lawmakers before they left for their monthlong summer recess.

The National Rifle Association said the requirements are vague and represent an attempt to hold gun dealers and makers liable for the actions of others. The new law, the group said, “seeks to frustrate law-abiding gun owners” with the goal of driving gun makers and dealers “out of business with frivolous litigation.”

The state’s firearm industry standard of conduct, starting in July 2023, will require those making, importing or selling guns to “take reasonable precautions” to make sure the weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands through sales or thefts.

That includes having “reasonable controls” to prevent sales to arms traffickers, straw buyers, those prohibited from owning guns, and anyone deemed to be at “substantial risk” of using the gun improperly.

The law is patterned after a New York measure that took effect last year to skirt a 2005 federal law blocking most liability lawsuits against gun-makers or dealers.

The New York measure declared such violations a “public nuisance,” taking advantage of a federal exemption that allows lawsuits when gun makers break state or local laws regulating the sale and marketing of firearms.

Delaware and New Jersey just enacted similar laws, and all contain provisions requiring firearms dealers to act responsibly, said Tanya Schardt, senior counsel and director of state and federal policy at the Brady gun control advocacy organization that sought the laws.

“There may be indicators or things that you see beyond just passing the background check that indicate to the dealer that they shouldn’t sell the gun,” she said.

“I would say the California law is more specific,” Schardt said. “But substantively I think it creates the same set of requirements, the same standards with regards to engaging in safe business practices.”

“It’s not asking someone to be psychic,” she added, but to take reasonable precautions in the same way that an automobile dealer could be liable for selling to a customer who is clearly drunk, for instance.

“It’s not creating liability, it’s not expanding liability beyond what’s reasonable … which is really the same standard that every other industry is measured against,” she said.

A federal judge in May rejected a challenge to the New York law by gun manufacturers and sellers.

Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, expects the California law will be challenged on the argument that it violates the federal law.

“The ability to be sued for doing something bad is already there,” he said, noting that gun makers and dealers are liable for any illegal activity. “This is the anti-gun side’s way of looking for a deep pocket.”

The law will allow the California attorney general, city and county attorneys and victims of gun code of conduct violations to sue gun retailers or manufacturers for civil damages.

“Nearly every industry is held liable when their products case harm or injury. All except one — the gun industry,” Newsom said in a video Tuesday announcing that he had signed the bill on Monday.

With the new law, he said, “gun makers will finally be held to account for their role in this crisis.”

California’s law allows gun makers and dealers to also be sued for alleged violations of other laws, including false advertising, unfair competition or deceptive acts or practices.

“Hitting their bottom line may finally compel them to step up to reduce gun violence by preventing illegal sales and theft,” said the bill’s author, Democratic Assemblyman Phil Ting.

The law will also prohibit manufacturers and retailers from making, importing or selling guns or related products that are “abnormally dangerous and likely to create an unreasonable risk of harm.”

That could include kits for building untraceable “ ghost guns,” “ bump stocks ” that increase the rate of fire for semi-automatic weapons, or “ bullet button ” assault weapons that allow for rapid reloading.