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San Mateo County leaders launched a new initiative to remove more guns from the hands of felons, stalkers and others prohibited from possessing firearms.
The new San Mateo County Gun Violence Prevention Program, announced on Wednesday by a collective of elected and civil leaders, will work to both remove firearms from prohibited people and expedite firearm restraining order applications.
The two-year program calls on several public agencies to work together to achieve its goals — the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force of the District Attorney’s Office will work alongside law enforcement to recover firearms, while San Mateo County Superior Court will streamline restraining orders.
County leaders hope the program will prevent firearms from falling into ownership of people charged with felonies, domestic violence restraining orders, hate crime convictions and other charges that deemed them an immediate risk to themselves or others.
“The county’s innovative program puts teeth behind specific investigations and facilitates better implementation of existing law,” Supervisor Dave Pine said in a statement. “In so doing, we will get more firearms off the street and better protect victims, survivors, and the community at large.”
The program follows a gun violence summit hosted in March, where county agencies and community organizations discussed the best ways to keep the public safe from gun violence.
Since then, the Board of Supervisors dedicated $2 million to launch a gun violence prevention program, funded thanks to a voter-approved Measure K half-cent sales tax.
“We are going to make an impact here,” San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe said in a statement. “It will save lives.”
Julia Weber, implementation director and domestic violence expert at the nonprofit Giffords Law Center, referred to the county’s efforts as “commendable” and something that should serve as a model for other communities across the country.
“Fair and effective implementation of gun safety policies and procedures saves lives and we’ve been honored to be a part of the cutting-edge work being done in San Mateo County,” Weber said in a statement.
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This is a much needed program that will help get firearms out of the hands of prohibited persons. They are approximately 25,000 persons on the Armed and Prohibited list in California
(https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/california-department-justice-releases-2021-armed-and-prohibited-persons-system) and we need to make every effort to recover any firearms that they may possess. Thank you, San Mateo County for leading the way with this important preventative measure.
Wagstaffe like to talk a lot about preventing gun violence but he doesn’t walk the walk. Case in point was the plea deal that saw a convicted felon who used a gun in a violent robbery that caused injury to one of the victims get off with just over a year in county jail. That does not show being tough on gun crime, does it?
https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/man-sentenced-in-redwood-city-hoover-park-robbery/article_c77c2850-e3bc-11ec-bda0-77c63e56dba5.html
Brian:
and that is typical. The DA’s all talk tough on gun crime and then deal the gun enhancements away. The criminals know they don’t face much more risk for using a gun in a crime than they do for simply committing the crime.
The DA’s need to start enforcing these gun laws instead of dealing them away. Until they do gun violence and the illegal carrying of guns is going to continue to rise.
Menlo Voter,
The problem is that doing their job and enforcing the laws does not get them press exposure. They like to make big statements so they can get articles written about how tough they are but then once the press is over they just let everything slide. I would love to see the Almanac or the San Mateo Daily or any other news organization take a look at how our DA is actually treating criminals accused of gun violence. I suspect that the residents of San Mateo county would not be thrilled with the fact they say one thing and do another.