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Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, joined a colleague Thursday to announce legislation intended to bolster California’s “Red Flag” law and other attempts at gun violence prevention.

Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, and Blakespear’s SB 899 would make it easier for California courts to ensure that people who are deemed a threat to themselves or others no longer have access

to firearms. It would establish uniform standards for the state’s gun violence restraining order law, along with laws related to other laws governing such orders. To prevent gun violence,

Blakespear said. the state must ensure “that current laws are working as designed.” “Right now, only domestic violence restraining orders require courts to follow-up on whether a firearm was

properly turned over as required by law,” she said. “SB 899 makes this practice consistent across all restraining order types and helps us keep firearms out of the hands of people who

should not have them. After all, laws are only as effective as their implementation.” In 2014, California adopted the nation’s first gun violence restraining order law, AB 1014, by Skinner,

when she was in the state Assembly. In addition, the state has five other restraining order laws that result in the relinquishment of firearms, addressing domestic, school and workplace

violence, elder or dependent abuse and civil harassment. But even with those laws, Blakespear and Skinner said that far too many people who have been deemed by a court to be a threat to

themselves or others still have guns. According to the state Department of Justice, there are around 24,000 Californians on the state’s Armed and Prohibited Persons System list. In 2021,

California enacted SB 320, intended to strengthen the state’s domestic violence restraining order law by helping ensure that those subject to the orders actually relinquish their guns. SB

899 is intended to further reduce the state’s backlog by applying SB 320’s standards to California’s other firearm-prohibiting restraining order laws. _– City News Service_