LOS ANGELES - A broad, bald Tennessean, Senior Special Agent Sam Richardson runs a six-person team of California Justice Department agents who are coming for your guns, but only if you no longer have the legal authority to own one in this state that has tightened firearm laws in increments over the years.

His division is the only law enforcement agency in the country assigned specifically to track down and take guns from felons, the mentally ill and others whose Second Amendment rights have been curtailed in court because of public safety concerns. That is, the people who even the National Rifle Association says should not have guns, a statement echoing in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

The program makes California’s gun-control policy perhaps the most aggressive in the nation.

A dozen years ago, the state set up a database that flags law enforcement officials when a registered gun owner is convicted of a felony, deemed mentally ill, has received a restraining order or committed one of about 37 qualifying misdemeanors.

The list is known as the Armed Prohibited Persons System, and while it has failed to prevent mass shootings in San Bernardino, Isla Vista and other cities in the state, it has taken tens of thousands of guns out of the hands of people prohibited from having them.

State officials say the kind of restraining order that a family or law enforcement official is allowed to seek here against someone of concern might have landed Nikolas Cruz, the alleged school shooter in Parkland, on the list if one existed in Florida. That will never be known.

The work of Richardson’s agents is overwhelming, with the number of guns and “prohibiteds” growing faster than the underresourced teams can take them off the street. So is the ingenuity of those selling guns, and those making guns, and those owning guns, legally or not.

There are 10,226 people on the list statewide. Of those, about 2,000 are in Los Angeles County, a vast urban desert covered by only Richardson’s team and one other.
Last year, state Justice Department agents seized 3,999 pistols and long guns, investigating more than 8,500 people in the process. The list has never dipped beneath 10,000 people since its earliest days.

“All of this takes time and real resources,” said Xavier Becerra (D), California’s attorney general, who said he is requesting more money for the program this year. “As quickly as we get these guns off the street, others are getting guns.”

There are many reasons for the slow progress — the lack of resources; day-round traffic that requires agents here to target people on the list in geographic clusters rather than urgency; and legal checks. Simply because a person is on the list does not give state agents a right to seize the gun, only to ask permission to do so. If denied, agents must wait for a warrant.

Story Date: June 10, 2018