Citing the failure of the state Legislature to act, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that he has collected 600,000 signatures of California voters, more than enough to qualify a gun control initiative for the November ballot.
“We’re there. This is going to be on the November ballot,” Newsom said Thursday. “Over 600,000 registered voters want to take some bold action on gun safety.”
Newsom’s campaign plans to begin delivering signatures tomorrow to county clerks for verification. If at least 365,880 signatures are found to be valid, the measure qualifies for the ballot.
Newsom said most of the proposals in the initiative “have one thing in common, that over the past number of years they have suffered the fate of either being watered down or rejected by the Legislature. We’re hopeful and confident that the voters of California will overwhelmingly support the initiative.”
The broad measure would require background checks for purchasers of ammunition, ban possession of ammunition magazine clips holding more than 10 rounds, provide a process for felons and other disqualified persons to relinquish firearms and require owners to report when their guns are lost or stolen.
The initiative would also address an issue caused by the previous adoption of Proposition 47, which made thefts of guns worth under $1,000 a misdemeanor. The ballot measure would make all gun thefts a felony.
Last week, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) said key provisions of the initiative, including the ban on large capacity magazines, are addressed by legislation this year, but that bills could be harmed by the initiative going forward.
A campaign committee including gun groups and law enforcement is being formed to defeat the initiative, according to one member, Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California. He noted that the measure has already been opposed by the California State Sheriffs’ Assn., which said it would put restrictions on law-abiding people without taking guns from criminals.
“it’s an initiative that carries multiple proposals that were either killed by the Legislature as not workable or vetoed by the governor,” Paredes said. “Newsom has collected failed policy issues from the Legislature and put them up as an initiative. Its going to be a massive effort to defeat him.”
Paredes said the initiative is a cynical attempt by Newsom to gain higher office.
“We know he’s doing this to pump himself up for his gubernatorial run,” Paredes said.
Newsom said his campaign for governor is secondary to his current effort to enact gun safety laws.
He said he has been active in the gun safety movement going back 15 years when he was mayor of San Francisco and a founding member of the group Mayors Against Guns. The NRA was so upset, they protested at his wedding in Montana, he said.
“I expect a good challenge from them,” Newsom said of the NRA. “They have been very aggressive to date. But we are very enthusiastic to be getting to this next phase.”
He cited internal polls indicating more than 70% of California voters support the initiative and a Field Poll that found greater support for provisions of the measure, including the ban on high capacity ammunition magazines.
The measure is also opposed by Chuck Michel, co-chair of the new Coalition for Civil Liberties. “Politicians like Newsom need to concentrate on stopping criminals and terrorists, not law-abiding citizens exercising their rights,” Michel said in a statement.
Authorities have not yet released information about the attacker’s identity or motive behind the attack on a family gathering.
Published On 30 Nov 202530 Nov 2025
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At least four people have been killed and 10 wounded after a shooting during a family gathering in northern California’s Stockton, local authorities said.
The shooting took place at a child’s birthday party, Stockton’s Vice Mayor Jason Lee said in a Facebook post late on Saturday.
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“I am in contact with staff and public safety officials to understand exactly what happened, and I will be pushing for answers,” he said.
Heather Brent, a spokesperson for the San Joaquin County sheriff’s office, said the victims included both children and adults.
The shooting occurred inside the banquet hall, which shares a car park with other businesses.
“We can confirm at this time that approximately 14 individuals were struck by gunfire, and four victims have been confirmed deceased,” San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office said in a post on X.
“This is a very active and ongoing investigation, and information remains limited. Early indications suggest this may be a targeted incident, and investigators are exploring all possibilities.”
Police said they received reports shortly before 6pm (02:00 GMT) of a shooting that occurred near the 1900 block of Lucile Avenue in Stockton.
The authorities have not yet released information about the identity or the motive of the attacker. They did not immediately provide information on the severity of the injuries of the surviving victims.
The office of Governor Gavin Newsom said he has been briefed on the “horrific shooting” in Stockton and will be following up on the evolving situation.
WASHINGTON — Time was — not that long ago — that after a mass shooting, gun rights advocates would nod to the possibility of compromise before waiting for memories to fade and opposing any new legislation to regulate firearms.
This time, they skipped the preliminaries and jumped directly to opposition.
The speed of that negative reaction provides the latest example of how, on one issue after another, the gap between blue America and red America has widened so much that even the idea of national agreement appears far-fetched. Many political figures no longer bother pretending to look for it.
A survey last year by the Pew Research Center, for example, showed that by 87% to 12%, Americans supported “preventing people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns.” By 81% to 18% they backed “making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks.” And by a smaller but still healthy 64% to 36% they favored “banning high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.”
The gunman in Uvalde appears to have carried seven 30-round magazines, authorities in Texas have said.
So why, in the face of such large majorities, does Congress repeatedly do nothing?
One powerful factor is the belief among many Americans that nothing lawmakers do will help the problem.
Asked in that same Pew survey if mass shootings would decline if guns were harder to obtain, about half of Americans said they would go down, but 42% said it would make no difference. Other surveys have found much the same feeling among a large swath of Americans.
The argument about futility is one that opponents of change quickly turn to after a catastrophe. It’s a powerful rhetorical weapon against action.
Esmeralda Bravo, 63, holds a photo of her granddaughter, Nevaeh, one of the Robb Elementary School shooting victims, during a prayer vigil in Uvalde, Texas, on Wednesday.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
“It wouldn’t prevent these shootings,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on CNN on Wednesday when asked about banning the sort of semiautomatic weapons used by the killer in Uvalde and by a gunman who killed 10 at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket 10 days earlier. “The truth of the matter is these people are going to commit these horrifying crimes — whether they have to use another weapon to do it, they’re going to figure out a way to do it.”
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made a similar claim at his news conference on Wednesday: “People who think that, ‘well, maybe we can just implement tougher gun laws, it’s gonna solve it’ — Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis.”
The facts powerfully suggest that’s not true.
Go back roughly 15 years: In 2005, California had almost the same rate of deaths from guns as Florida or Texas. California had 9.5 firearms deaths per 100,000 people that year, Florida had 10 and Texas 11, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
California’s rate of gun deaths has declined by 10% since 2005, even as the national rate has climbed in recent years. And Texas and Florida? Their rates of gun deaths have climbed 28% and 37% respectively. California now has one of the 10 lowest rates of gun deaths in the nation. Texas and Florida are headed in the wrong direction.
Obviously, factors beyond a state’s laws can affect the rate of firearms deaths. The national health statistics take into account differences in the age distribution of state populations, but they don’t control for every factor that might affect gun deaths.
Equally clearly, no law stops all shootings.
California’s strict laws didn’t stop the shooting at a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods earlier this month, and there’s no question that Chicago suffers from a large number of gun-related homicides despite strict gun control laws in Illinois. A large percentage of the guns used in those crimes come across the border from neighboring states with loose gun laws, research has shown.
The overall pattern is clear, nonetheless, and it reinforces the lesson from other countries, including Canada, Britain and Australia, which have tightened gun laws after horrific mass shootings: The states with America’s lowest rates of gun-related deaths all have strict gun laws; in states that allow easy availability of guns, more people die from them.
Fear of futility isn’t the only barrier to passage of national gun legislation.
Hardcore opponents of gun regulation have become more entrenched in their positions over the last decade.
Mostly conservative and Republican and especially prevalent in rural parts of the U.S., staunch opponents of any new legislation restricting firearms generally don’t see gun violence as a major problem but do see the weapons as a major part of their identity. In the Pew survey last year, just 18% of Republicans rated gun violence as one of the top problems facing the country, compared with 73% of Democrats. Other surveys have found much the same.
Strong opponents of gun control turn out in large numbers in Republican primaries, and they make any vote in favor of new restrictions politically toxic for Republican officeholders. In American politics today, where most congressional districts are gerrymandered to be safe for one party and only a few states swing back and forth politically, primaries matter far more to most lawmakers than do general elections.
Even in general elections, gun issues aren’t the top priority for most voters. Background checks and similar measures have wide support, but not necessarily urgent support.
Finally, in an era defined by “negative partisanship” — suspicion and fear of the other side — it’s easy to convince voters that a modest gun control proposal is just an opening wedge designed to lead to something more dramatic.
That leads to a common pattern when gun measures appear on ballots: They do less well than polling would suggest.
Then, as now, polls showed strong support for requiring background checks for sales that currently evade them. But support for the legislation was sharply lower than support for the general idea, Pew found.
Almost 8 in 10 Republican gun owners favored background checks in general, they found, but when asked about the specific bill, only slightly more than 4 in 10 wanted it to pass. When asked why they backed the general idea but opposed the specific one, most of those polled cited concerns that the bill would set up a “slippery slope” to more regulation or contained provisions that would go further than advertised.
Faced with that sort of skepticism from voters, Republican senators who had flirted with supporting the bill mostly walked away, and it failed.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden led the unsuccessful effort to pass that bill. Nearly a decade later, the political factors impeding action have only grown more powerful.
Texas school shooting
The recent string of devastating shootings has renewed calls for tighter gun restrictions. But as Kevin Rector reported, a loosening of gun laws is almost certainly coming instead, largely because of an expected decision from the Supreme Court, which is likely to strike down a broad law in New York that doesn’t allow individuals to carry guns in public without first demonstrating a “special need” for self-defense.
For all the impassioned speeches and angry tweets, for all the memes and viral videos of gun control proponents quaking with rage, most of the energy and political intensity has been on the side of those who favor greater gun laxity, Mark Barabak wrote.
Biden marked the second anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer by signing an executive order aimed at reforming policing at the federal level. As Eli Stokols reported, Wednesday’s order falls short of what Biden had hoped to achieve through legislation. It directs all federal agencies to revise their use-of-force policies, creates a national registry of officers fired for misconduct and provides grants to incentivize state and local police departments to strengthen restrictions on chokeholds and no-knock warrants.
Sluggish response and questionable decisions by the Food and Drug Administration worsened the nation’s infant formula shortage, agency officials told lawmakers at a congressional hearing. “You’re right to be concerned, and the public should be concerned,” said FDA Commissioner Robert Califf. The agency’s response “was too slow and there were decisions that were suboptimal along the way,” Anumita Kaur reported.
Only a couple of months ago, U.S. and European officials said a renewal of the Iran nuclear deal was “imminent.” But with little progress since then, and a shifting global geopolitical scene, the top U.S. envoy for the Iran negotiations testified Wednesday that prospects for reviving the Iran deal are “at best, tenuous,” Tracy Wilkinson reported. “We do not have a deal,” the Biden administration’s special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Cuba will not attend next month’s Summit of the Americas, a major conference to take place in Los Angeles, after the U.S. refused to extend a proper invitation, the country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, announced Wednesday. As Wilkinson reported, the decision throws the summit, which is crucial to the U.S.’ ability to demonstrate its influence in the Western Hemisphere, into further disarray.
The latest from California
GOP Rep. Young Kim would seem to have a relatively easy path to reelection in November — the national mood favors her party, she has a lot of money and the newly drawn boundaries for her Orange County district give her more Republican constituents. But Kim is suddenly campaigning with a sense of urgency, Melanie Mason and Seema Mehta report. She’s unleashed $1.3 million in advertising, and outside allies are coming to her aid with more spending. Most of it is aimed at fending off Greg Raths, an underfunded GOP opponent who has been a staple on the political scene in Mission Viejo, the district’s largest city.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and top legislative Democrats pledged Wednesday to expedite gun legislation. Among the bills are measures that would require school officials to investigate credible threats of a mass shooting, allow private citizens to sue firearm manufacturers and distributors, and enact more than a dozen other policies intended to reduce gun violence in California, Taryn Luna and Hannah Wiley reported. “We’re going to control the controllable, the things we have control of,” Newsom said during an event at the state Capitol. “California leads this national conversation. When California moves, other states move in the same direction.”
The Los Angeles mayor’s race has seemingly devolved in recent days into a rhetorical brawl between two of the city’s richest men, Benjamin Oreskes wrote. Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, who supports Rep. Karen Bass, says Rick Caruso’s history of supporting Republican candidates and being registered as a Republican a decade ago disqualifies him from being mayor. That came after Variety published an interview with Caruso in which he attacked the former Walt Disney Studios chairman for “lying” about him in ads by a pro-Bass independent expenditure committee predominantly funded by Katzenberg.
The growing corruption scandal in Anaheim has cost the city’s mayor his job, endangered the city’s planned $320-million sale of Angel Stadium to the team and provided a rare, unvarnished look at how business is done behind closed doors in the city of 350,000. Read our full coverage of the FBI probe into how the city does business.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s justices, citing the right to bear arms in the 2nd Amendment, sounded ready Wednesday to strike down laws in New York and California that deny most gun owners permits to carry concealed guns in public.
Most of the justices said people who live in “high-crime areas” and fear for their safety should be allowed to carry a gun for self-defense. And they said this applies equally to people who live in cities as well as in rural areas.
“Think about people who work late at night in Manhattan,” said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. “It might be somebody who cleans offices. It might be a doorman at an apartment. It might be a nurse or an orderly [or] somebody who washes dishes” who is “scared to death” to head home. “How is it consistent with the core right to self-defense” to deny that person the right to have a gun with them? he asked.
In defense of New York’s law, state Solicitor General Barbara Underwood argued for limiting the number of guns in densely populated areas. Too many guns in too many hands would increase the danger of gun violence, she said.
But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh disputed that view and said people there may have a greater need to protect themselves with a gun.
“How many muggings take place in the forest?” Roberts asked her.
Kavanaugh said the 2nd Amendment protects a right to have a gun for self-defense, which suggests the decision to be armed should rest with the gun owner, not a state or local licensing official.
“Why isn’t it good enough to say I live in a violent area and I want to be able to defend myself?” he asked.
During their comments and questions, the court’s six conservative justices made clear they are highly skeptical of laws that authorize state or local officials to deny gun permits to law-abiding residents.
Only the court’s three liberal justices spoke in defense of these laws and said there has been a long history of regulating guns in public.
Still, a gun rights ruling in the New York case could be limited. The justices, both conservative and liberal, said cities and local governments would not be prevented from enforcing bans on guns in “sensitive places,” and that could include subways, football stadiums and university campuses.
“Can’t we just say Times Square on New Year’s Eve is a sensitive place?” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Washington attorney Paul Clement, who was representing the gun owners, avoided a clear answer on where guns could be excluded, but he agreed the city would retain that authority to restrict guns in certain places.
At issue on Wednesday in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen were the laws in New York as well as similar measures in California and six other states that limit who may obtain a license to carry a concealed handgun in public.
Typically gun owners are required to show they have a “special need” or “good cause” to be armed, not simply a general fear for their safety. In New York City and Los Angeles, these permits are rarely granted.
UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, who has written widely on the 2nd Amendment, said the outcome could force local officials to shift their focus to declaring certain places off-limits to guns.
“New York may be forced to allow more people to carry but can still broadly define sensitive places to make it hard practically to carry in New York City,” he said.
The ruling will also have a direct effect in California as well. “If New York’s law is struck down, the precedent will lead to overturning California’s carry laws too,” he said.
Gun control advocates heard little to cheer from the argument.
“We are on high alert about the dangerous consequences of a potential ruling in favor of gun extremists,” said Hannah Shearer, litigation director for the Giffords Law Center. “But the court still has an opportunity to reject the unprecedented and historically inaccurate view that the 2nd Amendment precludes meaningful gun safety regulations in public.”
But Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law, pointed to the justices’ comments about restricting guns in sensitive places.
“Even the court’s most conservative justices have hesitations about granting the gun lobby its ultimate goal in this case — the unrestricted right to carry guns in all public places,” he said.
The case heard Wednesday and the likely outcome highlight the change in the makeup of the court.
In the last decade, the justices had turned down several challenges to the gun-permitting laws, including in California. But with the arrival of Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett, the court appears to have a new majority to bolster individual rights under the 2nd Amendment.
The case began when Robert Nash and Brandon Koch, who live near Albany, N.Y., applied for general concealed-carry permits but were turned down by a county judge because they did not “face any special or unique danger.” They were, however, licensed to carry guns for hunting or target shooting.
They sued along with the New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., alleging the restrictions violated their rights under the 2nd Amendment to bear arms for self-defense.
Officials announced Thursday that Los Angeles County has automated the process of notifying law enforcement agencies when people who violate restraining orders fail to comply with judges’ orders to hand their guns over to authorities.
Previously, court clerks had to identify which of the county’s 88 law enforcement agencies to notify about a firearm relinquishment by looking up addresses for the accused, which could take multiple days, Presiding Judge Sergio C. Tapia II of the L.A. County Superior Court said during a news conference.
Now, “notices are sent within minutes” to the appropriate agencies, Tapia said.
“This new system represents a step forward in ensuring timely, consistent and efficient communication between the court and law enforcement,” he said, “helping to remove firearms from individuals who are legally prohibited from possessing them.”
According to a news release, the court launched the platform, which the Judicial Council of California funded with a $4.12 million grant in conjunction with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office, and the L.A. Police Department and city attorney’s office.
The court also rolled out a new portal for law enforcement that “streamlines interagency communications by providing justice partners with a centralized list of relevant cases for review” and allows agencies “to view all firearm relinquishment restraining order violations within their jurisdiction,” according to the release.
The new digital approach “represents a major enhancement in public safety,” Luna said.
“Each of those firearms,” he said, “represents a potential tragedy prevented or a domestic violence situation that did not escalate, a life that was not lost to gun violence.”
Abby Zwerner, 28, was shot in 2023 as she sat in a first-grade classroom and sustained life-threatening injuries.
Published On 7 Nov 20257 Nov 2025
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A jury in the state of Virginia in the United States has awarded $10m to a former teacher who was shot by a six-year-old student.
The jury on Thursday sided with former teacher Abby Zwerner’s claim, made in a civil lawsuit, that an ex-administrator at the school had ignored repeated warnings that the six-year-old child had a gun in class.
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Zwerner, 28, was shot in January 2023 as she sat at a reading table in her first-grade classroom and spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and still does not have the full use of her left hand.
The bullet fired by the six-year-old narrowly missed her heart and remains in her chest.
Zwerner, who did not address reporters outside the court after the decision was announced, had sought $40m in damages against Ebony Parker, a former assistant principal at Richneck Elementary School in the city of Newport News, Virginia.
One of her lawyers, Diane Toscano, said the verdict sent a message that what happened at the school “was wrong and is not going to be tolerated, that safety has to be the first concern at school”.
Zwerner’s lawyers had claimed that Parker, the assistant principal at the time, had failed to act in the hours before the shooting after several school staff members told her that the student had a gun in his backpack.
“Who would think a six-year-old would bring a gun to school and shoot their teacher?” Toscano had asked the jury earlier.
“It’s Dr Parker’s job to believe that is possible. It’s her job to investigate it and get to the very bottom of it.”
Parker did not testify in the lawsuit.
The mother of the student who shot Zwerner was sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted of child neglect and firearms charges.
No charges were brought against the child, who told authorities he got his mother’s handgun by climbing onto a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was in his mother’s purse.
Newtown Action Alliance, an advocacy organisation that supports reforms aimed at addressing gun violence, said that the case points to the need for greater regulations over the storage of firearms in homes with children.
“Abby Zwerner was shot by her 6-year-old student using a gun from home,” the group said in a social media post, adding that “76 percent of school shooters get their guns from their homes or relatives”.
Abby Zwerner was shot by her 6-year-old student using a gun from home.
76% of school shooters get their guns from their homes or relatives.
Urge your Members of Congress to cosponsor Ethan’s Law.
Zwerner no longer works for the school district and has said she has no plans to teach again. She has since become a licensed cosmetologist.
While accidents involving young children accessing unsecured firearms in their homes are common in the US, school shootings perpetrated by those under 10 years old are rare.
A database compiled by US researcher David Riedman has registered about 15 such incidents since the 1970s.
The Football Association has charged Crystal Palace with misconduct after supporters held a banner depicting Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis holding a gun to midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White’s head.
The banner, unfurled during the 1-1 Premier League draw at Selhurst Park in August, read: “Mr Marinakis is not involved in blackmail, match-fixing, drug trafficking or corruption.”
Marinakis has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to such allegations.
The FA has charged Palace with failing to ensure that supporters did not behave in an improper, offensive, abusive or provocative way.
Tottenham say they are supporting Destiny Udogie after confirming the Italy defender was allegedly threatened with a gun by a football agent.
On Monday, BBC Sport reported an unnamed Premier League footballer was targeted in London on 6 September.
Another man is also alleged to have been blackmailed and threatened by the same individual during the incident in question. No injuries were reported.
The Metropolitan police, who are investigating, said a 31-year-old man was arrested on 8 September on suspicion of possession of firearms with intent, blackmail and driving without a licence. He has been bailed while enquiries continue.
In a statement on Tuesday, Spurs said: “We have been providing support for Destiny and his family since the incident and will continue to do so. Given this is a legal matter, we cannot comment any further.”
The 22-year-old Udogie joined Spurs from Udinese for £15m on a five-year deal in the summer of 2022, before immediately returning to the Serie A club on a season-long loan.
He returned to Tottenham for the start of the 2023-24 campaign and has made 76 appearances for the club.
The Italian has played 10 times this season, including Tuesday night’s 4-0 win over Copenhagen in the league phase of the Champions League.
