fbpx
×

San Bernardino Shooting Stirs Gun Debate

December 5, 2015

By Josh Richman  jrichman@bayareanewsgroup.com

This week’s massacre in San Bernardino reignited the nation’s gun-control debate — perhaps nowhere more so than in California, home to some of the nation’s strictest gun laws.

The shooters found ways to get around those laws — having an intermediary buy the rifles from a dealer, modifying those rifles in a way they became illegal under the state’s assault-weapons ban, and subbing in illegal high-capacity magazines.

So as Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom prepares to ask voters next November to approve new gun-control provisions that the Legislature has rejected, the argument rages on: Will even tougher laws help?

Asked whether his proposed initiative might have done anything to avert the massacre, Newsom acknowledged: “We don’t know, and that’s the honest response. But even if the initiative would not have impacted the particular circumstances of this tragedy, that doesn’t suggest … that in the future it couldn’t save lives.

“It’s incumbent upon us to be accountable.”

Under Newsom’s proposal, Californians who have owned magazines with more than 10 rounds before a high-capacity magazine ban took effect in 2000 would have to turn them in, sell them to a licensed gun dealer, or move them out of state. The measure also would require licenses for ammunition sellers and background checks for ammunition buyers.

Chuck Michel, attorney for the California Rifle and Pistol Association, said Newsom’s measure “would have done nothing to stop this and will do nothing to stop any other kind of firearms crimes,” because criminals, terrorists and the mentally ill don’t worry about breaking gun laws.

“All that Newsom’s initiative does, and all most gun control measures do, is make most people who don’t understand the reality of this situation feel safer because they feel ‘something’ is being done — but the something is nothing other than to give people a false sense of security,” Michel said.

The debate grew ugly in Washington, D.C., as Republicans quashed Democrats’ efforts to pass legislation prohibiting gun sales to people on the government’s terrorist watch list.

Proponents argue that those considered too dangerous to fly shouldn’t be able to buy guns. Opponents say the list is a bureaucratic tool rife with errors and would deny people their Second Amendment rights.

There’s been no indication that Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, were on that watch list before they sprayed dozens of bullets into Farook’s colleagues’ holiday party Wednesday at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino.

They had two rifles and two handguns, all semi-automatics. One of the 9mm handguns was a Smith & Wesson, the other a Llama. The rifles were of the very popular and common AR-15-type: a .223-caliber DPMS Panther Arms model A15 and a Smith & Wesson M&P15.

That kind of firepower isn’t needed in domestic society, gun control advocates say.

“Sensible gun laws work; we’ve proven it in California, and we’re not going to give up,” U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said during a news conference Thursday, adding that the Golden State has passed many gun controls since the 1990s, “and over that period of time, we have had a reduction in gun violence of 56 percent.”

Yet the nation as a whole has seen similar declines in gun violence over the past two decades, and all the weapons used in Wednesday’s slaughter were purchased legally in California, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported. Farook bought the handguns himself, but the rifles were bought by someone else in 2011 and 2012; it’s not yet clear how they ended up in the killers’ hands.

Photos of the rifles released by police show they were modified after purchase because they sport a combination of features deemed illegal under the assault-weapons law.

The law says a semi-automatic rifle — which fires one round with each trigger pull — is an assault weapon if it has a detachable magazine plus any one of several other features, including a folding or telescoping stock; a pistol grip; a forward pistol grip; and a flash suppressor. The rifles in the photo both appear to have almost all of those features.

Gov. Jerry Brown in 2013 vetoed a bill that would have classified all semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines as assault weapons — the centerpiece of a package of gun-control bills that lawmakers introduced in the wake of December 2012’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

“This ban covers low-capacity rifles that are commonly used for hunting, firearms training, and marksmanship practice, as well as some historical and collectible firearms,” Brown wrote in his veto message.

Newsom’s “Safety for All” initiative would require owners of “grandfathered” magazines holding more than 10 rounds to turn them into police for destruction, sell them to a licensed firearms dealer, or move them out of the state. San Francisco supervisors and Sunnyvale voters chose to require that in 2013, though no magazines have been turned in by owners in either of those cities.

Newsom’s proposed measure also would require licensing of ammunition sellers and instantaneous point-of-sale background checks for all ammunition purchases to weed out those convicted of a felony or a violent misdemeanor, people with restraining orders against them, or those declared dangerously mentally ill. No other state requires background checks for ammunition purchases.

Police found large amounts of ammunition with Farook and Malik and another 4,500 rounds at their home, but it’s not clear where or how that ammunition was purchased.

And Newsom’s measure wouldn’t have prevented them from purchasing ammunition legally. Not having criminal records, they probably would have passed the background checks.

Josh Richman covers politics. Follow him at Twitter.com/Josh_Richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.

By Josh Richman  jrichman@bayareanewsgroup.com

This week’s massacre in San Bernardino reignited the nation’s gun-control debate — perhaps nowhere more so than in California, home to some of the nation’s strictest gun laws.

The shooters found ways to get around those laws — having an intermediary buy the rifles from a dealer, modifying those rifles in a way they became illegal under the state’s assault-weapons ban, and subbing in illegal high-capacity magazines.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.