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.”