“Gun violence has been a tragic but consistent narrative across the United States for the better part of the past twenty years, but our laws have not progressed to properly address the nature of gun access and ownership today…. The potential consequences for innocent people cannot be understated, but legislators can intervene, and in California they have.”

Three weeks ago in Lewistown, Maine, a town with a population of around 39,000, 18 people were murdered with an assault rifle, and 50 were injured. The gunman, who was recently discharged from a mental health facility, walked into a bowling alley, a bar, and a restaurant firing multiple rounds at unsuspecting patrons.

This marked America’s 565th mass shooting of 2023, with experts expecting this year to be the deadliest year on record for mass shootings. The tragedy Lewistown faces is unfortunately a norm that too many towns across the United States are familiar with. Headlines depicting gunmen ravaging innocent people are so frequent we risk being desensitized to gun violence almost entirely.

Gun violence has been a tragic but consistent narrative across the United States for the better part of the past twenty years, but our laws have not progressed to properly address the nature of gun access and ownership today. To make matters worse, dangerous weapons are only becoming more easily accessible: recently, a Ninth Circuit judge overturned California’s three-decade-old ban on assault weapons, finding that assault-style weapons have no equivalent in early American history and that the ban is therefore unconstitutional.

Legal ownership of assault-style war weapons paired with weak red-flag laws will only make it more dangerous to send our kids to school, go to the grocery store, or enjoy an evening out with friends and family. So Attorney General Bonta is correct in his unequivocal statement that assault weapons have no place on our streets, the courts’ interpretation of the Second Amendment is becoming more literal, and less pragmatic.

With a Supreme Court that is more conservative than ever in its interpretation of the second amendment, we can expect federal judges at all levels to follow the Court’s lead–resulting in broader access and fewer barriers to gun ownership. Debates over the right to bear arms have plagued our country, with various courts wrestling with the question of gun ownership. In what will surely be a contentious 2023-2024 session, the Supreme Court will hear United States v. Rahimi, which challenged the constitutionality of a federal ban on the possession of guns by individuals who are subject to domestic-violence restraining orders.

The potential consequences for innocent people cannot be understated, but legislators can intervene, and in California they have.

In this past legislative session, the Prosecutors Alliance was proud to sponsor commonsense gun reform legislation introduced by Assemblymember Mike Fong, D-Alhambra. Simply put, these reform efforts–AB 732 and AB 733–were designed to take guns off of the streets and make our communities safer.