California offers public safety blueprint after Supreme Court strikes down gun restrictions
On June 23, the Supreme Court issued their highly anticipated opinion on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association vs. Bruen. The ruling strikes down a century-old law that requires a New York resident who wants to obtain a license to carry a concealed gun to demonstrate proper cause. The ease of restrictions will affect several states with similar laws, including California, which has some of the most stringent gun restrictions in the U.S.. Yahoo News talks to California Attorney General Rob Bonta on the state's pathways to ensure public safety.
Video Transcript
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ROB BONTA: I thought about all the folks who could have been kept safer who won't be now, all of the risk that could have been removed that will exist. And I thought about the children and Uvalde and how we had not done enough to keep them and other children and other Americans in our country safe from gun violence and that this is a step backwards. This is a sad day.
The California concealed carry weapon permitting law does require good cause. So that is no longer constitutionally permissible. That, as of the Bruen decision today in our view, has been struck down. Beyond that, there's not a lot of clarity as to whether or how the Bruen decision affects other of the many common sense gun laws in California.
Many of them are untouched, completely untouched. Most of them are untouched by Bruen. If any individuals think that the Bruen decision impacts some of those other gun laws, they're going to have to make a case and bring a lawsuit making their case and a judge has to agree with them. We currently don't have any major red flags or concerns about how the Bruen decision affects other of our laws in California, like our assault weapons ban or our large capacity magazine ban, our background checks, our cooling off period.
We have many laws in California that have led to California having some of the strongest gun laws in the nation and also having one of the lowest firearm mortality rates in the nation. So our gun laws work. They make communities safer. And outside of the proper cause component of our concealed carry weapon permitting law, the Bruen decision we don't believe it impacts those other laws. So we'll see if we get sued what a judge thinks. And we'll go through that process as needed.
I think another important part of the Bruen decision that's very, very important is that in addition to making it clear that a concealed carry weapon law in any state in the United States cannot have a proper cause or good cause component to it, it also reiterated the components that a concealed carry weapon permit law can have. First, it said you can require a permit for a concealed carry weapon.
It's not constitutionally required that any individual at any time can possess a concealed weapon and possess it in any location they want at any time. That's not true. The court made clear that a concealed carry weapon law can have safety assessments to determine the dangerousness of the individual seeking to have a concealed weapon, things like mental health assessments, like background checks, like firearms training, like fingerprinting.
The court also made clear in the Bruen decision that concealed weapons can be prohibited from being possessed in certain, what the court calls, sensitive places, places like polling stations, like schools, like courts, like legislative assemblies, like government buildings. We think it might also apply to other places like plazas or parks or amusement parks or sporting venues. So while the court did strike down one component of the concealed carry weapon scheme, specifically the proper cause or good cause requirement, it also made clear that there are quite a few restrictions that are constitutionally permissible and that states like California can use to keep communities safe.
We're going to pursue all available pathways to make communities safer from gun violence in California and to maintain that leadership role in the nation that we have where our firearm mortality rate is one of the lowest in the nation. There's quite a number of bills moving through the legislature right now that are headed towards the governor's desk that I know the governor is aware of, interested in. I've been at press conferences with him where he's talked with legislators about many of these bills, bills to keep junior ARs out of the hands of kids and not be marketed to children, bills like one I'm sponsoring which pierces the federal liability shield the gun manufacturer distributor and seller immunity that they have by creating a state law, provides a pathway for gun distributors and gun manufacturers and sellers to be sued when they don't take appropriate steps to meet their standard of care required to keep guns out of the hands of straw purchasers and individuals who are harm to themselves or others or to be in the illegal marketplace.
There's also a bill that's being presented for the governor's signature that the governor supports the Senator Bob Herzberg is authoring which is modeled after SB 8 in Texas, but used in a constitutionally appropriate way where there's a private right of action, where individuals can sue gun manufacturers, distributors, or sellers of high caliber weapons ghost guns or assault weapons that are already illegal and rendered illegal in a constitutional way.
The Bruen decision is certainly a setback, but the fight continues. And there are many, many actionable steps that can be taken to make communities safe from gun violence that are not being done now. California, in my humble opinion, is a blueprint for the types of laws that are evidence-based, data-driven, effective, save lives, and make communities and neighborhoods safer. And many of those laws are not being implemented in many states throughout the country. They're not being implemented at the federal level.
If they were, lives would be saved-- thousands. It's undisputed. More lives would be saved if more states and the federal government did what California has done when it comes to gun violence and gun safety efforts and laws. So there is much we can do that the Bruen decision does not touch or impact that we haven't done yet, but if we had the will and if our elected leaders stepped up and got it done to make communities safer.