Publication: Pew Trusts

For decades, American consumers have been buying water-resistant packaging and clothing, stain-resistant carpets and Teflon cookware. Now there is growing alarm that the chemical components that give those products their appeal are ending up in the water supply.

Drinking water in 33 states from New Jersey to California has been tainted by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, more commonly referred to as PFAS. Now they are also showing up in human blood: A 2015 study found PFAS in 97 percent of blood samples tested.

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“People now realize it doesn’t just matter what you put in your mouth but what that food product is wrapped in,” said Washington state Rep. Joan McBride, the Democrat who sponsored the packaged-foods legislation. “These chemicals are called persistent chemicals. They stay with you, they’re insidious.”

In testimony on her bill, scientists warned of the dangers of PFAS while companies insisted they are safe. McBride said waiting for the state to determine a safer alternative gives companies time to work through stockpiles and even help develop a suitable replacement.

California Assemblyman Phil Ting, a Democrat, sponsored a bill to put a warning on products with PFAS “so consumers and restaurants can make that educated decision” about using them. “Because I’m not sure even restaurants understand the decision they are making.”

Publication: EdSource

Following the February massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., California legislators, like their counterparts around the nation, introduced a number of bills to address school safety.

Two bills — one by introduced by a GOP lawmaker calling for armed police officers on every school campus and another mandating mental health professionals in schools — have already died in the Legislature. But other more modest measures, having to do with locks on classroom doors, gun violence restraining orders and school safety plans, are still alive.

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Authored by Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, AB 2888 amends the state’s existing “red flag” law to enable an employer, a co-worker, or an employee of a high school or college to request the courts to issue a gun violence restraining order from a person owning, purchasing, possessing, or receiving a firearm or ammunition.

It is supported by the California chapters of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Coalition Against Gun Violence, and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. It is opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Firearms Policy Coalition. The legislative analysis did not include a cost for the bill.

Publication: HuffPost

Lawmakers in the California Assembly voted Monday to advance a bill that would authorize employers, co-workers and school personnel to request the temporary confiscation of guns from individuals determined to pose a danger to themselves or others.

The legislation, AB 2888, would build on California’s existing “red flag” law, passed in 2014 following a deadly shooting spree in Isla Vista. The 22-year-old gunman in that case had reportedly exhibited a number of warning signs before killing six people, and then himself, in the rampage.

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The new bill would expand the list of people who can file for such restraining orders to include a subject’s employer and co-workers and the staff of a high school or college that the person has attended in the last six months.

“We’re grappling with this issue of gun violence as a nation,” bill sponsor Assemblyman Phil Ting (D) told HuffPost. “I’ve never said this is a panacea, but it’s just one of many solutions we have to offer.”

Publication: NBC Los Angeles

California lawmakers took steps Monday to let school employees ask judges to temporarily strip gun rights from potentially dangerous people in the wake of a mass school shooting in Texas.

California is already one of a handful of states that allow immediate family members and law enforcement officials to request gun violence restraining orders against people who show warning signs of violence. Assemblyman Phil Ting's bill, AB2888, would extend that ability to more people, including school employees and co-workers.

Democratic lawmakers supporting the bill invoked the Friday shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas that killed 10.

"I ask that we don't just send thoughts and prayers, that we actually send some action to students and families who really are scratching their heads and wondering what we can do to stem the violence at our schools," Ting said.

Publication: San Francisco Chronicle

The young man had posted his revenge fantasies online, writing about how he wanted to shoot classmates at his community college. The 21-year-old had recently bought a gun, his brother told police.

But UC Davis psychiatrist Amy Barnhorst said there was little she could do when police, fearing that the man posed a danger to the community, brought him to the Sacramento-area hospital where she works. He wasn’t mentally ill, she concluded, so he couldn’t be held involuntarily. And without such a diagnosis, and no evidence he’d committed a crime, police couldn’t take his gun away.

In those moments, Barnhorst says, she points frantic parents and concerned police to a 2-year-old law that allows them to petition a court to temporarily remove guns from someone if they pose a danger to themselves or others.

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There are efforts under way to expand the law. Skinner, the Berkeley senator who wrote the original bill, wants to eliminate court fees for immediate family members who apply for orders. Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, would expand the list of people who can seek the orders to include co-workers, employers, and public and private schoolteachers and other school workers.

The Legislature passed a bill similar to Ting’s AB2888 in 2016, but Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it, saying it was too soon to expand a law that had just taken effect.

“Gun violence restraining orders have proven to be a tool that can be used to get guns out of the hands of the wrong people,” Ting said at a Capitol hearing last month. “We’ve seen, unfortunately, the devastating effects of mass shootings when guns are in the hands of the wrong people. This just merely expands it to the people who are around individuals the most, people you go to school with, it’s people who you work with.”