Kamala Harris confiscated guns
Then-Attorney General Kamala Harris looks over some of the guns seized from individuals legally barred from possessing them following a news conference in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, June 16, 2011. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Previous Post
Next Post

California’s Armed & Prohibited Persons System [APPS] is designed to identify prohibited persons who own firearms so the guns can be confiscated. But — surprise! — the system is weighed down by inefficiencies, ignorance, errors, bureaucratic bloat and sheer volume.

On the ground, the envisioned collaboration between state and local criminal justice officials to confiscate firearms has been scattershot, at best. Some police departments say they had no idea they even had access to monthly state reports identifying individuals in their jurisdictions who remain unlawfully armed.

At the same time, many judges have done little to ensure their orders requiring gun relinquishments are executed, worsening the backlog and potentially putting the public’s safety at risk.

Meanwhile, understaffed state agents in the Bureau of Firearms are often outmatched by the onslaught of new cases every day from throughout California. Each one must be checked and cross-checked by hand across multiple criminal justice databases before being added to the prohibited-persons list. Simply put, the additions are coming faster than the subtractions. 

The work-intensive process and outmoded technology has led some in law enforcement to question the database’s reliability. They say they’ve discovered errors during field operations and that investigations based on the list are a waste of resources.

Experts on the system — who note that thousands of guns have, in fact, been removed from individuals — say stakeholders throughout government must summon the resolve to finally fix the system’s deepening problems. 

“We’ve made a decision as a society that there are people who, for a constellation of reasons, should not be allowed to have firearms. Are we going to enforce that social decision or not?” asked Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis. 

— Robert Lewis in Outgunned: Why California’s groundbreaking firearms law is failing

 

Previous Post
Next Post

46 COMMENTS

  1. Sounds like they are having similar experiences as we are on the other coast. Good we still haven’t been able to get a lot of the ammo restrictions of the SAFE act going because of difficulties, incompetence, and general impracticality of the system devised by the Cuomo clan.

    • That is how all these crazy libs think. If is socially acceptable for them or for what they perceive as the common good they will trample everyone’s rights who think different whether it infringes on ones rights or not. I left CA back in 89 and have visited a couple of times since. Last being about 12 years ago. Best decision I made. It used to be paradise until the left took over.

  2. Maybe the system glitch is it’s inability to distinguish between a registered democrat – allowed to own, vrs a republican or independent – Not Allowed. That’s what gums up the works.

    • I think we need a special committee to over see the department which oversees the department failing.
      We all get six figure salaries and get catered lunches daily, but no updated computer equipment!
      I am waiting for everyone who didn’t register their MSR’s to be prohibited! lol
      California is a joke…
      The rest of the free states are laughing at you.

  3. Considering that that” constellation of reasons” to make someone a ” prohibited person” is continually expanded through interpretation and administrative/legislative and case law means (at least until successfully contested in court) our rights will remain,to paraphrase Mark Twain ” In jeopardy every time the legislature is in session”
    We also need to reinforce the unyielding fact that any legitimate reason (and there’s very few)to remove the rights of anyone would ALSO mean that they should not be out of custody.
    No longer in prison/jail/on parole or probation? Why again is it that your rights don’t revert across the board if you’re no longer under court information or restriction? And how is it that the same folks who want you to be able to vote from prison DON’T want you to have the right to keep and bear arms as part of the Natural Right of self defense? They want you voting AND dependant. And maybe,if you are deemed Acceptable To The Apparat,The State Will Let You Be An Apparatchik.

    • We also need to reinforce the unyielding fact that any legitimate reason (and there’s very few)to remove the rights of anyone would ALSO mean that they should not be out of custody.

      Two + two still add up to four, though perhaps not in California.

  4. More additions to the system than subtractions? What was that saying again?…”When guns become outlawed, we’ll all become outlaws.”

  5. You just can’t convince gun grabbers: The best gun control is no control. Encourage EVERYBODY to carry. Don’t force them, just encourage them. Bad guy whips out a gun to commit carnage, somewhere between 3 and 30 good guys whip out their own weapons. Bad guy reconsiders, puts his gun away, and everyone goes home healthy and well. If bad guy fails to reconsider, SOMEONE puts a hole in him, and almost everyone goes home healthy and well.

    • Reminds me of the apocryphal story about the guy in New York City back in the day, who walked into a bank during the noon hour, pulled a gun, and announced “This is a stick-up!” The place got deathly quiet, and when he looked around, he realized that literally every other person in the bank was pointing a gun at him. Seems the bank was right around the corner from the FBI office, and it was pay day, so all the agents were lined up in the bank to deposit their checks.

  6. Craig Deluz testified before California last year I beleive. The database itself is only about 50% accurate meaning that you have a 1 in 2 chance of being accused of being prohibited when you actually are not.
    They are sending out officials without warrants to weasel their way into your homes to take your guns. Once they have them you then have to spend thousands on attorney fees to get them back.
    Remember politely tell them to go pound sand and that they need a warrant.
    The APPS program is a dumpster fire and needs to be abolished.
    Many people don’t have the money to fight and taking someone’s guns because of a 35 year old pot possession conviction which back then was a felony does not make us safer.
    Make it known in your household, no individual may enter or be invited without a warrant, no matter what they tell you. That is our right as a citizen.

  7. Are tax payers paying for this morass? Nah. The Legislature stuck lawful gun owners with the tab by raising registration fees. They have spent tens of millions of dollars on this system, yet have little to show for it. Further, the newly minted DOJ agents who were on the round-up squads (i.e. those that didn’t immediately quit after training to seek more lucrative opportunities) went after the “bad apples” with involuntary mental health treatment, not daring to go after the vicious dangerous gangbanger felons that shoot up poor neighborhoods. When this whole thing started, there were ten thousand names on the lits, and it has never gotten shorter. IN fact, it may have more than doubled since the program began….

    • So the state has converted a constitutionally protected civil right into an expensive, restricted privilege — and the “registration fee” is in fact a tax that pays government goons to harass people who look like easy targets. Progressivism at its finest.

  8. A co-worker lives in CA. Next week he and some friends are going ‘off-the-trail’ hiking in Yosemite. I asked about bear encounters. “Packing my 38 Special with +p ammo” he said.

    “Is that the only gun you have”?

    “Yup. I know the bear’s gotta be just ready to bite me, then, I’ll shoot him in the mouth.”

    He’s a nice guy and a good worker. I hope he comes back.

    CA gun laws don’t make people safer.

    • Even here in CA there are better bear guns for sale.

      But in Yosemite that bear is pretty safe. You don’t want the head aches of even a good anti bear shoot there.

  9. In California you have, the SECURITY, to have sex in public. There is No fear from being arrested. You have, the SECURITY, to be able to shoot up crystal meth in public, to improve your sexual experience. There is No fear from being arrested.

    And most people in California have no freedom. And the ones that do their numbers are shrinking.

    • Chris. Freedom means being able to have sex in public, shoot up or use whatever drugs you wish and all the while packing a belt fed machine gun.

      Freedom is messy, dirty and dangerous. Some folks never figure that out.

      • Acquainting license with Messy freedom is not accurate. Because the sexually liberated and drug legalization crowd both have historically supported and gun control. Yes there are a few people in these two groups who support the Second Amendment. But you and I both know that the rest of them the vast majority do not support the Second Amendment. Because they’re afraid of getting shot by the “normal people”.

        The sexually liberated and drug legalization crowd are responsible for the closing of every gun store in the city of San Francisco. And they banned the open carry of guns in gay pride parades back in the 1970s.

        Real Freedom means you take a chance doing something that someone else may not like. And you’ll have to deal with the consequences. You don’t get any guarantees from the state. And that is messy freedom.

        And it is an armed Society that forces everyone to be more polite to each other. Without any involvement of the state.

        • “Normal people” don’t shoot others because of lifestyle choices. Tyrants shoot people for using or abusing their own bodies.

          An armed society without a state is chaos at best and tyranny at worst. Witness Somalia. There needs to be a state. Our problem is figuring out the right balance. How much state is too much?

          Cutting back a little on our current sized state would no doubt be good. But all? No good.

        • Yes jwm “normal people” do shoot others because of their lifestyles all the time. And they are not tyrants. The state has allowed the Folsom Street Fair and Pride parades, as places where people who have this kind of lifestyle to go to. And 400,000 (+) people attend this event each year. That is where you go to enjoy your lifestyle in public, uninterrupted by people who disagree.

          You don’t go out of your way to seek out people who dissagree.
          1.
          “This defensive gun use out of Southeast Houston falls solidly in the ‘Can’t Make This Stuff Up’ category. A couple weeks before this incident, police had arrested the suspect for exposure (walking around naked in public). Tuesday evening, while out on bond, he was au naturel once again…except this time, he was also masturbating on a bicycle outside a woman’s house.”

          https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/woman-shoots-publicly-masturbating-nutcase-trying-to-get-into-her-house/

    • What is true in San Francisco and Los Angeles is not necessarily true anywhere else in this rather large state. Trying any of that up here in the north will definitely get you cited, your drugs seized, and your ass hauled off to jail (before you get your get out of jail free card because there is no room).

  10. Wow, that picture is 10 years old and Kamala is still wearing the same clothes.
    Anyway it seems to me that California’s APPS system is about as effective as the
    Illinois FOID system. IOWs not the least bit effective at all.
    I am not going in to details, I have written about this a few times.

  11. It’s my concern, my concern, what I’m trying to get across is, if I may, and yes its germaine. My concern , my concern is California will become so heavy, heavy, over, cap, cap capacity, it is capacity isnt it? Over capacity. It’s my concern California will become so, so heavy, it will, will capsize.

  12. “We’ve made a decision as a society that there are people who, for a constellation of reasons, should not be allowed to have firearms.”

    No you have lady. I choose not to strip people of their God given right of self defense. You are a fascist.

    • Criminals should not have guns. Mentally ill people should not have guns. If you think that makes someone a fascist, you are a fool.

      • Some one makes a mistake at 20 and they lose their civil rights for life? And giving the state the power to shut down your rights because of mental illness drives the state to find more and more levels of mental illness.

        These are the tactics of a fascist.

        • Gang bangers kill hundreds of people a year, they are young and it’s more than a simple mistake. Seriously mental ill people are a threat to themselves and others. Allowing these people to be armed in the name of civil rights is stunningly stupid.

        • So “Pree Crime” is a thing with you. If you’re too dangerous to have a gun then you’re too dangerous to be loose amongst us.

          Otherwise you have all your rights.

        • I have no idea what pree crime is.

          I do believe it is stupid in any debate about gun control to say every single non-incarcerated person should have a gun.

          We see people every single day on TV that are a threat to society. Your dumbass idea they should be armed because they aren’t in jail/prison yet is fucking stupid.

        • Cato,

          “Your dumbass idea they should be armed because they aren’t in jail/prison yet is fucking stupid.”

          Allowing anyone who is super-dangerous to society (whether seriously mentally ill, convicted murderers, etc.) to walk freely among us–with or without firearms–is fvcking stupid.

          After you tell us how some government agency would magically determine (accurately) who is super-dangerous to society, and after you tell us how said government agency would magically prevent said super-dangerous people from acquiring firearms via theft or illicit purchases/acquisitions, please tell us how said government agency stops said super-dangerous people from using all manner of readily available stuff (e.g. knives, machetes, axes, chemicals, poisons, vehicles, gasoline and matches, archery, etc.) from harming thousands of people.

        • No_common_sense

          Reread the entire thread dumbass. This has nothing to do with locking people up before they commit a crime. It’s about denying gun rights to someone that has already proven themselves dangerous by committing, being convicted of a crime. Whether we like it or not, those people are released back into society. Convicted murderers and other felons walk freely amount us every single day. If you think someone that murders someone or molests children at 20 should be allowed to own a gun at 30, 40, or whatever age is dangerous.

  13. The answer to Dr. Wintemute’s question is no. Of course not. Because for the people who engineer such societal decisions, armed criminals and psychopaths are just a gimmick, a lever used to move the weight of the law against ordinary gun owners. Gun control lobbyists have sought at every turn to scare responsible citizens away from gun ownership with onerous rules and legal pitfalls. Dangerous armed people? The elite make sure they always have armed security to deal with them. Besides, it’s not like the methheads and gangbangers can afford to live in their neighborhoods. Why would they bother with them?

  14. The support of Pro 47 by the Libertarians Liberals and the Left has created the situation that now exists in San Francisco. And perhaps soon to the rest of California. We will see of the rural business owners are going to put up with this degeneracy? This is where nullification at the local level comes into play.

    So I don’t know what happened with the Libertarians??? But they have embraced the concept that drug addicts need to be enabled to continue their habits. And the only way to do that is to make it easier to steal from productive people.

    From 2 Jul 2021
    “Target stores in San Francisco getting hit hard by shoplifting”, video 15 min long
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS7GIwVtheA

    I dont believe Libertarians Liberals and the Left support private property rights. They supported the democrat city leaders ordering the police to stand down.
    They supported not shooting rioters and thieves all during the looting and burning of the cities last year.

    They don’t support business owners and property owners using deadly force to protect what they have created. Built from their own hard work and self sacrifice.
    They don’t even support homeowners who try to protect their own home from the destruction of a mob.

    Someone, not me, left this comment about this video:

    “Coming next, it’ll be acceptable to walk into someone’s house to steal.”

    And I believe also that is coming next.

  15. “We’ve made a decision as a society that there are people who, for a constellation of reasons, should not be allowed to have firearms. Are we going to enforce that social decision or not?” asked Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis.

    Who, aside from the above mentioned is it that “made” the referenced decision seems an unanswered question. How come?

  16. Typical Political Boondoggle – everyone taking/talking about what they have accomplished but the reality is that those responsible for implementation know not what to do, how to do it, waiting for someone else to do something first or waiting for equipment. Just a political boondoggle and waste of money. But there are those who will give the Politicians credit for doing something eventhough it accomplished nothing.

  17. Ya know why the LEO behind Headboard Harris in the photo is grinning like a possum?

    It is because he knows most of those rifles are going to be his when it’s all said and done.
    I’d be grinnin’ too.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here