“In his state budget plan released days after he took the oath of office, Newsom proposed adding $5.6 million — about 50% more than in Brown’s budget this year — to seize guns from thousands more people who are ineligible to possess firearms because of criminal convictions or mental illness.
The governor is also asking lawmakers to beef up a California Department of Justice unit responsible for enforcing laws on gun sales. And his budget proposes more money for the Firearms Violence Research Center at UC Davis.
At the same time, state lawmakers have cited Newsom’s aggressive stance on gun control in reintroducing bills that were vetoed by Brown.
Newsom made it clear that the issue would be a priority in his Jan. 7 inaugural speech, when he said “there are powerful forces arrayed against us,” including “a gun lobby willing to sacrifice the lives of our children to line their pockets.”
The gun-seizure program has been underfunded in the past, resulting in a backlog of some 10,000 people who bought firearms but were later charged and convicted of a felony or found to have a serious mental illness that disqualifies them from being armed.
The additional money to seize firearms is “aimed at addressing longstanding issues” with the gun-confiscation effort, said Jesse Melgar, a spokesman for Newsom, who added, “as governor, he will continue to be a loud voice for common-sense gun safety.”
Newsom was the official proponent in 2016 of Proposition 63, an initiative that outlawed large-ammunition magazines, mandated background checks for those who buy bullets and levied fines for failing to report when guns are stolen or lost. It also created a process for taking guns away from people when they are convicted of a felony, which puts them in the state’s Armed Prohibited Persons System.
The system matches the names of gun buyers to a list of those who later become ineligible to own firearms because of a criminal conviction, a court judgment of serious mental illness or being subject to a domestic violence restraining order. But it currently has a backlog that could be eliminated of some 10,000 people if lawmakers approve Newsom’s budget request this spring. The plan would increase resources for seizing guns from those on the list, from $11.8 million to almost $17 million, allowing the state DOJ to remove guns from about 4,500 additional people.
Newsom’s budget also proposes a way to save the program from a pending legal challenge that argues the system is improperly funded with fees from gun purchasers — paying for it out of the state’s general fund.
The additional funding is “significant” and “desperately needed,” said Amanda Wilcox, a leader of the California Chapters of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Wilcox, who lost a daughter to gun violence, sees the budget increase as a sign that Newsom will also sign a series of recently proposed gun bills if they reach his desk later this year.
“We know that Gov. Newsom shares our key goal of keeping dangerous weapons out of dangerous hands and we anticipate his support of our package of gun bills this year,” she said.
By Patrick McGreevy
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