The San Diego region just got a $4.2 million boost to expand gun violence prevention efforts through court orders designed to quickly get guns out of the hands of people who pose a threat.

The money from two state grants will go to outreach and education about civil court orders, including gun violence restraining orders, that require people who are alleged to be dangerous to turn over their firearms. The funding will also be used to create a task force to enforce those court orders.

San Diego is the most active user of gun violence restraining orders in the state. At a news conference Tuesday at the San Diego Police Department downtown, Attorney General Rob Bonta said the city has “truly been a model for how to use evidence-based, data-driven solutions that work that prevent firearm violence from happening in the first place.”

“It’s also been an exemplary policy and approach that others can learn from,” Bonta said.

Gun violence restraining orders, or GVROs, are judge-approved civil court orders intended for crisis intervention. They require a person to surrender or sell their firearms and bar the person from having guns or ammunition for the duration of the order, which can last up to five years.

Supporters of such orders hail them as a vital public safety measure to intervene in dangerous behavior. Critics disparage them as overreach and an affront to the Second Amendment.

City Attorney Mara Elliott has championed gun violence restraining orders, and her office said Tuesday it has obtained more of them than any other city in the nation. Law enforcement working with the San Diego City Attorney’s Office have seized more than 3,700 guns using the orders.

Elliott said the grant money “will lead to one of the most significant expansions of gun violence prevention work in California” since the state law creating them was passed, prompted by the 2014 mass shooting near UC Santa Barbara that killed six people.

Of the new funding coming to the region, $2 million from the state’s Judicial Council will go toward a new Firearms Relinquishment Task Force to enforce court orders intended to disarm people alleged to pose a threat. The task force met for the first time last week.

The remaining $2.2 million, from the California Department of Justice, will go toward law enforcement training and public education about gun violence restraining orders and other court orders designed to separate a person from firearms. That money will go to the San Diego City Attorney’s Office.

Tuesday’s announcement of increased funding comes little more than six weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of removing firearms from certain dangerous people such as domestic violence suspects, the City Attorney’s Office noted in a news release. It added that California is “doubling down” on using court orders to disarm people who pose a threat.

The state’s gun violence restraining order law went into effect in 2016. From then to the end of last year, two California counties account for 44 percent of all such orders — Santa Clara and San Diego, according to a report that Bonta’s Office of Gun Violence Protection issued in June.

San Diego County also had “by far the highest number” of gun violence restraining orders made into “permanent” orders, which can last up to five years, during that same eight-year stretch, the report stated — 35 percent of all the long-term orders in California were issued in San Diego.

Gun violence restraining orders are often obtained very quickly after an incident or threat. They start as temporary 21-day orders, followed by a court hearing for a judge to consider extending them.

Many of those do not turn into long-term orders, and it’s not uncommon for the temporary order to be dissolved. Sometimes deals are struck to handle cases through less restrictive means, and people can get their weapons back sooner.

California has nine types of court orders that can remove guns from people, including in cases alleging domestic violence, workplace violence or civil harassment. The report from Bonta’s office states that gun violence restraining orders accounted for 1 percent of the orders issued with firearm provisions in 2023.

Originally Published: August 6, 2024 at 6:35 p.m.