ENCINITAS — State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, joined a colleague today to announce legislation intended to bolster California’s “Red Flag” law and other state statutes that prevent gun violence.
State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, and Blakespear’s Senate Bill 899 would make it easier for California courts to ensure that people who are deemed a threat to themselves or others no longer have access to firearms. It would establish uniform standards for the state’s gun violence restraining order law and the state’s other firearm-prohibiting restraining order laws.
“We must do everything we can to prevent gun violence,” Blakespear said. “That means ensuring that current laws are working as designed.
“Right now, only domestic violence restraining orders require courts to follow up on whether a firearm was properly turned over as required by law,” she said. “SB 899 makes this practice consistent across all restraining order types and helps us keep firearms out of the hands of people who should not have them. After all, laws are only as effective as their implementation.”
In 2014, California adopted the nation’s first GVRO law, AB 1014, by then-Assemblywoman Skinner. In addition, the state has five other restraining order laws that result in the relinquishment of firearms to address domestic violence, school violence, workplace violence, elder or dependent abuse and civil harassment.
But even with those laws, the lawmakers said far too many people who have been deemed by a court to be a threat to themselves or others still have guns. According to the state Department of Justice, there are around 24,000 Californians on the state’s Armed and Prohibited Persons System list.
In 2021, California enacted SB 320, intended to strengthen the state’s domestic violence restraining order law by helping ensure that those subject to a DVRO actually relinquish their guns. SB 899 is intended to further reduce the state’s APPS list backlog by applying SB 320’s standards to California’s other firearm-prohibiting restraining order laws.
