Guns may need to be kept under lock and key
They would also need to place them in a lock box in unattended cars and report theft within 48 hours; ammunition vendors would need to keep records of sales
Two weeks after a man gunned down 58 people at an outdoor Las Vegas concert, the Bay Area’s largest city could pass a law requiring gun owners to lock up their firearms when they leave the house — a new gun control measure far stricter than state legislation.
The idea, under consideration Tuesday, stems from sweeping measures proposed last year by San Jose city councilmen Ash Kalra — now a state assemblyman — and Raul Peralez. In addition to requiring gun owners to lock up their weapons when they’re not home, they’d need to place them in a lock box in unattended cars, report theft within 48 hours and ammunition vendors would need to keep records of sales.
But new state legislation last year covered many of those gun control policies, except locking up firearms when an owner isn’t home. The San Jose City Council on Tuesday will debate that policy, which some experts say could be difficult to enforce. And now Peralez — joined by Councilman Chappie Jones — wants to go further. They want gun owners to secure firearms inside the house even when they’re home.
San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley have similar safe storage gun laws.
The lawmakers said in a joint memo that nearly 1,300 children die and 5,800 are injured in gunrelated incidents every year. They said a gun is stolen every two minutes in the United States and 38 percent of suicides by gunfire are committed by kids under age 17. Nearly half of the country’s fatal suicides are done using guns.
Peralez, a former San Jose police officer who just rejoined the force as a reserve, owns a gun and has a concealed weapons permit. He said he respects the Second Amendment and people’s right to bear arms, but the country’s founding fathers never envisioned “a civilian possessing 47 guns, which would include over a dozen high-powered rifles” used
to carry out the country’s deadliest mass shooting in Las Vegas.
“With such high numbers of gun-related deaths, homicides and suicides, gun safety measures and precautions are more important than ever,” they wrote.
Irene Olender, a member of the Safe Cities Coalition, a group formed in 2016 to draft the policy, said guns should be treated as a “public health issue.”
“We want people to realize that guns in the house are dangerous and they need to be secured so they’re not accessed by kids,” Olender said. “People can secure them with something as simple as a trigger box — not even a lock box.”
But Tony Napolitano, a Republican attorney, said safe storage laws have the opposite effect: They often increase violent crime, he said, because criminals are emboldened knowing the victim doesn’t have easy access to their weapon to defend themselves.
“It allows criminals to become more brazen because they know the guns will be locked up,” he said. He added that the policy also allows them to be victimized twice — police become aware that a gun owner’s firearm was unsecured when they respond to a burglary or other property crime. Then the gun owner could be cited for an unlocked weapon. “It puts them in the position of being punished for being the victim.”
Other gun advocates have said it takes too long for a gun owner to unlock a trigger lock if they’re attacked. Olender doesn’t buy that argument.
“A trigger lock takes no more than one or two seconds to disable,” she said. “And many times in a burglary people are killed with their own gun — if they are killed.”
The City Council will discuss the policy at its meeting 1:30 p.m. Tuesday inside the council chamber at City Hall, 200 East Santa Clara Street in San Jose.