Go and get those guns
The mass killing that left six dead in Illinois last week underlines an alarming gun-law issue. Though rules bar dangerous people from owning firearms, failure to aggressively enforce the law can be lethal. Despite a violent arrest record, the killer acquired a handgun to carry out the shootings.
California, with some of the toughest laws in the nation, faces an Illinois scale problem. Since 2013 state authorities are directed to seize firearms from people with criminal convictions and mental health problems. At that time, the forbidden list totaled 20,000, but it’s only been whittled down to 9,000 through the administrations of two state attorneys general, Kamala Harris, who is now a U.S. senator and running for president, and Xavier Becerra, who now holds office.
The reasons are plausible sounding, dealing with administrative headaches, hiring snags and budgets. More money is promised, and Gov. Gavin Newsom is pledging to support fresh efforts.
But public safety and the sadly perpetual nature of shootings demands followthrough that’s lacking. The fact remains that Sacramento has a list of armed and dangerous people, yet it’s allowing them to keep their guns.
Becerra calls the results to date “phenomenally successful.” He’s only partly right, given that confiscations have increased and no violent encounters have marred the effort. Seizing guns from a particularly tough and unpredictable crowd can’t be an easy assignment. The task is given to the state Justice Department run by the attorney general. The law followed an outcry over the gun massacre of 20 children and six adults in the Sandy Hook school killings.
Former state Sen. Mark Leno, the San Francisco Democrat who pushed through the funding measure for the seizure law, says the work needs constant attention. There’s “the unglamorous continual need” to pursue the task.
Confiscating guns has turned out to be slow work, so slow that money was funneled back to state government unspent. Newly hired agents often left for better-paying law enforcement jobs. The spread-out addresses of barred gun owners took longer to work through. Not surprisingly, Republican lawmakers have criticized the performance of Harris and Becerra, both Democrats.
Still, these problems aren’t very convincing in the face of an overwhelming fact: The state has a ready-made list of armed individuals considered to be serious threats. A sensible gun law with wide public support should be carried out promptly.