For all California’s nation-leading attempts to regulate firearms, the state has not found a way to deter those happy to skirt the laws with stolen or homemade and increasingly prevalent “ghost” guns.
In just two recent examples, police say the first weapon recovered after gunmen killed six people and wounded 12 in downtown Sacramento early Sunday had been stolen. The homemade assault weapon a father used a month ago and a few miles away to kill his three daughters, their chaperone and then himself was unregistered.
“People argue that we’ve got the toughest gun laws in the nation. But they’re clearly not tough enough,” Democratic state Sen. Robert Hertzberg said Monday.
The latest mass shooting in a nightclub area blocks from the state Capitol renewed calls for tougher firearms laws from President Joe Biden. Biden called for Congress to take many of the steps nationwide that California already has in place — imposing background checks, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and outlawing ghost guns.
