California program on guns in spotlight

It’s only state with system to track firearms owners, proactively disarm

SAN JOSE, Calif. — It’s difficult to keep guns away from ex-cons and the mentally disturbed, but a one-of-a-kind California program is designed to do just that. And in light of the Texas church shooting that left 26 dead, some are debating whether a program like it could have thwarted Devin Kelley’s murderous rampage.

The Armed and Prohibited Persons System program, proposed in 1999 and updated in 2006, makes California the only state in the country to establish an automated system for tracking firearm owners and to provide the legal authority to proactively disarm convicted criminals, people with certain mental illnesses, and others deemed dangerous.

Supporters like Richard Aborn say programs like that one need to be replicated in other states given the increased frequency of mass shootings. Aborn is president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City and an architect of the defunct federal assault weapons ban, as well as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which implemented routine federal background checks for gun purchasers.

“What we saw on [Nov. 5] is what happens when a deranged individual has possession of lawful firearms,” Aborn said. “Every time [the Armed and Prohibited Persons System] is enforced and guns are returned, we’re preventing a tragedy. Mass shootings are a form of domestic terror. We should equip citizens to prevent mass shootings as much as we can.”

But the program has endured periodic criticism since its inception. A lack of resources has prevented the California Department of Justice from keeping up with the backlog of prohibited people. And gun-rights advocates have said uneven administration of the policy is unduly infringing on Second Amendment rights.

The biggest challenge is that a large number of people are not supposed to be in the program, said Craig DeLuz, spokesman for the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Calguns Foundation.

DeLuz and fellow advocates say a big problem with the system is that there’s no quick way to remove someone’s name once his court-ordered weapon restriction ends.

“There is no guarantee that when your time is up, your name is going to be removed,” DeLuz said. “A big part is simply keeping up with the system and doing basic administration that could really make a difference.”

Aborn acknowledges that the execution of the program can always be improved, but that should not be taken as an indictment of its broader policy aims.

“If the test of the validity of government programs is they act 100 percent perfectly, there would be no government programs. We’d never do anything,” he said. “We can do better, but just because we can’t do everything doesn’t mean we can’t do everything we can.”

In late 2006, California set up a database to track firearms owners and cross-reference those names with criminal and mental-health records to identify individuals “who have been, or will become, prohibited from possessing a firearm subsequent to the legal acquisition or registration of a firearm or assault weapon.”

The trouble is, the list of those people grew faster than the state could take away guns from those who shouldn’t have them. In 2013, after the Sandy Hook shootings in Connecticut, there were more than 20,000 people on the prohibited list who had never been contacted by the state. In response, the state Legislature granted $24 million to the state Department of Justice to hire more agents to reduce the backlog.

Those growing pains appear to have subsided — to a degree. According to the latest Armed and Prohibited Persons System report released in March, the number of individuals in the database prohibited from owning firearms in calendar year 2016 grew by more than 14 percent, in large part because the state expanded its data-collection beyond handguns to include long guns like shotguns and rifles.

But overall the number of people in the database was cut from 12,691 on Jan. 1, 2016, to “an historic low of 10,634 subjects,” according to the report. The last time the database contained so few subjects was February 2008, the report stated.

In 2016, the Armed and Prohibited Persons System enforcement program completed 9,183 investigations, resulting in 511 arrests and the seizure of 3,954 firearms. Other significant seizures include 947,653 rounds of ammunition, 3,742 magazines, and 663 large-capacity magazines.

Challenges remain, especially when it comes to hiring enough agents to knock on the doors of everyone on the Armed and Prohibited Persons System list. According to the 2016 report, the program got 36 limited-term agent positions, 10 of which the state Department of Justice was able to fill last calendar year.

With the Texas church shooting, attention is once again focused on California’s unique campaign to get guns away from people who shouldn’t have them.

In Kelley’s case, the U.S. Air Force admitted that it had failed to submit his domestic-violence conviction to a federal database after he was discharged from the military. That conviction could have prevented him from buying the rifle he used — although only in California might it have led authorities to seize guns he already had. The military’s failure to enter his name into the National Criminal Information Center, a federal database, apparently allowed Kelley to pass several background checks and buy the firearms.

The lapse fueled the ongoing push-back from gun-rights groups about California’s gun-confiscation policy.

“What we saw in Texas is what happens when unfortunately one government agency doesn’t do its job,” DeLuz said, adding that nationalizing a policy like the Armed and Prohibited Persons System, and trying to unite assorted record-keeping and registration standards from state to state, would only worsen the situation.

“We wouldn’t let someone’s free speech or property rights be violated in the same way we do with the Second Amendment,” he added.

Aborn said imperfection does not justify inaction, particularly by Congress, which has the “moral imperative” to invoke changes in an era where mass shootings have become more frequent. He noted that since the federal assault weapons ban that he helped craft was rescinded in 2004 after a decade, the number of mass shootings has nearly tripled to at least 30, and the number of mass-shooting victims has increased more than fivefold to nearly 1,000.