California’s gun control laws under scrutiny

As national debates over gun control reignite in the wake of a Monday mass shooting in Colorado and mass shootings last week in Georgia, California is revisiting some of its own decades-old battles to regulate firearms.

Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel on Tuesday introduced a bill that would require law enforcement to use guns manufactured with microstamping technology, which imprints a unique mark on bullet casings linking them to a specific firearm. The Woodland Hills Democrat’s bill comes 14 years after California became the first and only state to require all new semiautomatic pistols be made with microstamping technology — but manufacturers have effectively rendered the law toothless by not introducing new handgun models in the state since 2007. Gun-rights advocates also question whether microstamping technology is effective.

• Gabriel: “The main priority here is to really overcome the obstinance from gun manufacturers. They’ve resisted at every step of the way.”

• Mark Olivia, spokesperson for the National Shooting Sports Foundation: “It sounds great on paper but … it doesn’t hold up. All it does is infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens and make firearms unavailable to them.”

No state has enacted more gun regulations than California, and although its gun violence rate is much lower than the national average, it’s difficult to parse how much of that is due to stricter laws.

Last week, then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office signed a settlement in federal court admitting its gun-registration website was so riddled with flaws that potentially thousands of Californians weren’t able to register their assault weapons, putting them at risk of being wrongly charged with a misdemeanor or felony. The same federal judge also said last year that California’s ammunition background check website was so glitchy that it prevented tens of thousands of legal gun owners from buying ammunition in a violation of their Second Amendment rights.