California’s Gun Violence Restraining Orders (GVRO) allows immediate family members to petition a court to have their relative’s firearms confiscated. Ex parte (without the accused being present). If a judge rules “there is a substantial likelihood that the subject poses a significant danger of harm to himself, herself, or another in the near future by having in his or her custody or control, owning, purchasing, possessing, or receiving a firearm” the judge may order the family member’s firearms confiscated. For 21 days initially. Then up to a year. Renewable. Assemblyman Phil Ting wasn’t satisfied . . .
Mr. Ting wants to revise/expand the GVRO law via a new bill AB-2607.
This bill would also authorize an employer, a coworker, a mental health worker who has seen the person as a patient in the last 6 months, or an employee of a secondary or postsecondary school that the person has attended in the last 6 months to file a petition for an ex parte, one-year, or renewed gun violence restraining order.
If the bill becomes law, just about anyone who opposes gun ownership — or has some other grudge against a gun owner — could file for a GVRO. The bar for “a danger of harm” would [continue to] be set extremely low; no judge wants to be “that guy” (a judge who denied a GVRO prior to a firearms-related crime). And penalties for a false report are minor.
AB-2607 has been referred to the Pubic Safety Committee where, hopefully, it will die. But the fact that the Bill exists at all shows us that the slippery slope argument against gun control is a thing. Allow one infringement on Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, and others follow.
Interestingly, the following text is also on the bill, though struck through.
Existing law, as set forth in the Constitution of the United States and the California Constitution, establishes certain fundamental personal rights, including, among others, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable seizures and searches, the right to equal protection of the laws, the right to due process of law before being deprived of life, liberty, or property, the right to a trial by a jury, and the right of a defendant in a criminal case to a speedy public trial.
I wonder how that got there . . .