LOS ANGELES — It’s been a busy week for gun control legislation in the state of California. After signing 11 separate bills over the past week that, among other things, prohibit the marketing of firearms to minors, further restrict ghost guns and allow state and local governments and Californians to sue gunmakers, Gov. Gavin Newsom took his boldest action yet on Friday by signing SB 1327 — a law that gives $10,000 cash rewards to residents who successfully sue banned gun makers in the state. 

The following are reactions from LA City Attorney Mike Feuer and California Rifle and Pistol Assn. Legislative Director Rick Travis.

Both interviews have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

LA City Attorney Mike Feuer

Gov. Newsom signed a slew of new gun laws this week. Which stand out to you as the most significant?

I think the one that is going to generate by far the most attention is SB 1327, which is a bill that was sponsored by the governor and allows what's called a private right of action to individual residents of California to sue a gun manufacturer who has sold illegal assault weapons or ghost guns here in our state. That's the law that is modeled on the Texas law allowing private residents to sue clinics that provide abortion services.

This is going to be challenged in court, but it is a very strong effort by the state to make a very, very specific point. If there are going to be laws in the United States that empower private residents to enforce provisions of state law, then it ought not just be residents of Texas who can try to prohibit abortion from taking place. It could be residents of California who are trying to keep streets safe.

Can you explain the legal precedent that allowed California to mimic SB 8 in Texas with SB 1327? 

The theory of the bill is that in Texas, the Supreme Court allowed to stand legislation that allows a private resident to sue if she or he comes across a clinic that provides abortion services. In California, the analog of the bill is let's allow residents of the state to sue gun manufacturers and distributors who are making, selling or transporting illegal guns.

There will be arguments made whether the Texas law and the way it has been validated applies with the same force of legal reasoning here in California. I’m of a very strong view that the epidemic of gun violence that we have across the country cannot be allowed to go unabated. Every resident of our state, a child in a school, a worker at their place of business, someone walking down the street is entitled to be safe from gun violence. And the impetus behind this bill is to say while California has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, that doesn’t mean, as the governor said today, that we can be complacent.

Gov. Newsom signed 12 new gun laws in the past week. What more still needs to be done?

Another law that he signed is a law that sets standards for the firearms industry and starting in 2023 will allow jurisdictions like mine to sue in the event that a gun is used in crime. If it fails to meet certain standards, that's going to be a very important law as well. Another law that was signed today is a law that would build on work that I've done here in Los Angeles after the Parkland school shooting when I convened a blue-ribbon panel on school safety.

Among the elements that we proposed was to provide to parents at the beginning of the school year documents that would apprise them of the requirement to keep any guns they have safely stored. The bill that was signed this week by Gov. Newsom would, as a statewide matter, require school districts to provide information about the safe storage of guns to all parents. 

Why does that matter so much? Because guns that have not been safely stored are used in suicide attempts, especially by kids. Guns that haven't been safely stored have been taken to school by kids. My office has prosecuted cases just like that. 

What beyond the legislation that the governor signed today needs to happen. Here's the thing for us in California, for us here in Los Angeles: we benefit from having some of the most stringent gun violence prevention laws in the United States. Studies have shown again and again that those jurisdictions that have the most comprehensive, commonsense gun safety rules are those that have seen the least gun violence.

But those rules, whether I’ve written them here in the city, whether they’re written into the state or some place else, do not protect us when federal law fails to ensure similarly commonsense rules in other states. That relates to background checks. That relates to who can get a gun. That relates to the question that the Supreme Court just decided, which was a decision that allows people to carry weapons concealed on their person in public.

What needs to be done is to assure that the national consensus on key gun safety rules, background checks, no assault weapons — issues like that should be reflected in federal legislation. So leaders here need to continue to be very effective at enforcing the laws we've been able to add, and we need to be more effective across the nation in germinating the same rules elsewhere.

In LA County, 30% of shootings are related to ghost guns. According to the LAPD, they contributed to over 100 violent crimes in the city of LA last year alone. How will AB 1621, signed earlier this week, strengthen ghost gun restrictions?

It takes a step in the right direction. Clearly, ghost guns are a major threat when it comes to violence on our streets. A ghost gun is a gun that can be used in a crime but never be traced because it doesn’t have any serial number on it. So if it’s an untraceable weapon and it can be purchased as ghost guns can be in pieces on the internet, a person who can never pass a background check could have access to it. 

Our office has sued the leading distributor of ghost gun parts and kits. And we've sued because we have alleged that that company has violated California law in the way in which it distributes guns here in our state. It's going to go to trial in about six months. That’s going to be a cutting-edge case in the United States because the number of ghost guns on LA streets has proliferated dramatically. 

We have seen the number of ghost guns go from 600 or 700 a year to more than 1900, very soon thereafter. And that escalation is to be attributed to how easy it is to get them online. And if you’re a criminal, that’s the gun you want. 

Every step we can take to make it harder for ghost guns to be in circulation, including laws the governor signed, to make it easier for private residents to sue about ghost guns, is very important. But this is an issue that goes beyond legislation. It also requires active enforcement on the street, and I’ve been a very strong proponent of working with LAPD Chief Michael Moore to get ghost guns off of our streets.

The California Rifle and Pistol Association opposes these new gun control bills in part because it doesn’t believe California is enforcing the laws it already has. Specifically, the group says the state is allowing people on a prohibited list to continue to own firearms and that lax prosecution is allowing criminals out of prison early. How do you respond to that?

I agree that there needs to be a consensus on a few things. For years and years, as I've written very important gun violence prevention laws that are now part of the rules that we have, every time I've written one of those laws in the past, the opponents of those laws have said, we don't need a new law. We’ve got to enforce the laws. 

So what I would say to those who invoke that slogan, “we should be enforcing the laws we have better first,“ I agree. Join us in finding the most concrete ways we can to enforce the laws better. And for goodness sakes, when a law is proposed that is designed to do just that, don't oppose it. Support it. I welcome that collaboration if they're willing to offer it any day of the week.

Rick Travis, legislative director with the California Rifle and Pistol Association

The association is based in Fullerton, which represents eight million gun owners in the state of California. 

What’s your reaction to the many new gun control laws Gov. Newsom signed this week?

A lot of these bills that are being proposed and signed into law are designed per the governor to remove criminals off the street, but the state of California has over 25,000 people on a prohibition list. That list tracks people who’ve broken the law and are not allowed to have firearms. It knows where they live, what kinds of firearms they have. That list of people grows every year and we’re not arresting them. We’re not putting any money into taking those people off, yet they keep putting more laws out there that put law-abiding citizens in harm’s way. 

What does your organization think is the solution to gun violence?

Our argument has been since 1875 that we support anything that removes the criminal use of firearms off the streets. Yet a lot of these laws are not doing that because criminals are not going to gun stores to buy guns. We say that with confidence because we’ve requested literally over 75 public records acts requests at county, state and state agency levels and have received nothing.

No. 1, make the penalties stick. This administration has continually relaxed the penalties. Somebody gets convicted of a crime, and they’re sentenced to X years, and they keep passing laws to let those people out earlier and earlier. Somebody goes out there and commits a horrible felony who we agree should not have firearms, and then they’re let out early. They’re criminals. They’re going to find all kinds of tools to break into homes, hurt people and ruin their lives in the case of severe assaults and rapes and killing people. We’ve got to stop this. Relaxing penalties has made us less safe. 

No. 2, educate people about firearms use. Especially for kids and younger adults, there’s a lot of glorification on TV and in video games to just wipe everything out. Yet if you talk to anybody in the firearms industry, and more importantly the average person we work with in our organization who wants to protect themselves or have an alternative way to put food on the table, that’s not who they are. Education is a huge issue. We’d like the state to work with us to get that education out there.

Finally, I come from a family personally that has members in law enforcement, and all of them are across the board politically, but they have one universal thing: we can’t be there to prevent the bad thing. We can only be there to respond to it. Between these bills and the big breach at the Department of Justice, there’s a reason a lot of gun owners in California feel they’re being persecuted by this governor.

The other thing I will say is not so long ago we had a lot of people who thought it was a good idea to do a high-speed chase because they got famous in the media. Then government and the media came together and said we’re not going to allow that to be sensationalist. They’re not going to be famous for 15 seconds. Amazingly, those high-speed chases started to drop off. 

I think we need to have some collective efforts where a young person, who is primarily male and has mental health issues, which seems to be the common denominator, becomes famous for two or three years because of courtroom dramas. Unfortunately, there’s people who see this as a cool way to be known. There’s more we can do to minimize that.