Newsom signs stronger California gun bills

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of gun laws Tuesday aimed at addressing gun violence, reducing domestic violence and bolstering the state’s red flag laws that allow people to remove firearms from individuals deemed dangerous.

“California won’t wait until the next school shooting or mass shooting to act. In the absence of congressional action, our state is once again leading the way by strengthening our nation-leading gun laws,” Newsom said in a press release.

The package includes measures that strengthen safe storage requirements to protect children, develop more training for law enforcement to build on red flag laws, and create more resources for child custody caseworkers and officers to determine whether abusers can have access to firearms.

It also includes measures restricting animal abusers and individuals unable to stand trial from having guns, as well as a proposition aimed at increasing information-sharing to make it easier for courts in the state to prevent individuals deemed as threats from possessing firearms.

“Data shows that California’s gun safety laws are effective in preventing gun-related deaths — which makes the ongoing inaction and obstruction by politicians in the pocket of the gun lobby even more reprehensible,” Newsom said in the press release.

The press release referred to a fact sheet on the governor’s website stating California saw a 43 percent lower gun death rate than the rest of the U.S. in 2022, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) the state’s Department of Justice Office of Gun Violence and Prevention analyzed.

The release also noted that in 2022 the state’s age-adjusted firearm homicide rate per capita for people younger than 25 was 45 percent below the rate recorded for the rest of the country, according to preliminary CDC data.