California punched back Friday against two recent landmark US supreme court decisions as the state’s governor announced he will sign a controversial, first-in-the-nation gun control law patterned after a Texas anti-abortion law.
“While the supreme court rolls back reasonable gun safety measures, California continues adding new ways to protect the lives of our kids,” Newsom said in a statement released before he signed the bill. “California will use every tool at its disposal to save lives, especially in the face of an increasingly extreme supreme court.”
Opponents including an unusual combination of gun owners’ advocates and the American Civil Liberties Union have criticized creating what they said amounts to a bounty system to encourage such lawsuits. The ACLU called California’s law “an attack on the constitution” for deliberately trying to sidestep judicial review by empowering enforcement by citizens and not governments, and for undermining due process rights.
The new law “will make it easier for victims of ghost gun violence, like me, to help enforce our gun laws”, said Mia Tretta, who was shot in Santa Clarita during a 2019 attack at Saugus high school and is now a volunteer with Students Demand Action. Newsom acted a day after he signed eight other gun laws among numerous measures adding to California’s already strict regulations.
The governor recently signed another bill patterned after a New York law that empowers anyone who suffered harm to sue gunmakers or dealers who fail to follow precautions under a “firearm industry standard of conduct”.