Why is a decade-old red flag gun law still only seeing scattered use across California?

In response to the scourge of mass shootings that have helped define the 21st century in the United States, lawmakers in California passed a landmark red-flag law that would allow authorities to disarm those whose threatening behavior might boil over into deadly violence.

It’s been about a decade since gun-violence restraining orders were enabled by California law, but their use is still middling in the state, according to data from the California Department of Justice. That has prompted some of the law’s architects and most prominent backers to make a renewed push to increase awareness both among the public and law enforcement.

“We have example after example where (the orders) have prevented a suicide, a domestic violence shooting or a mass shooting,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in an interview. “But there is still room to grow.”

Santa Clara County has secured the most gun-violence restraining orders in the state for two years running. It filed 683 orders in 2024, or 41% more than San Diego County, which filed 483 and had previously topped the list.

Riverside County authorities filed 299 last year; After that, none of the 55 other California counties, including the most populous, Los Angeles County, filed more than 200, according to figures from the state Department of Justice.

In the Bay Area, San Mateo County filed 166 orders in 2024, followed by Alameda County with 128, San Francisco with 35, and Contra Costa with 14.

The restraining orders came into stronger public focus in September as part of National Suicide Prevention Month and a concerted effort by the California Office of Emergency Services and its Reduce the Risk campaign, for which Rosen is an official adviser. But the orders’ resonance is malleable across the calendar: October is both Domestic Violence Awareness Month and National Crime Prevention Month.

Supporters pitched the orders as a reasonable compromise that temporarily removes firearms from those who have openly expressed specific threats of violence or self-harm, and mandates the return of weapons should a judge determine the owners’ fitness to have them.

This class of restraining order has run into strong opposition from gun-rights groups, which criticize the impingement on gun owners in the absence of an alleged crime, placing the burden of proving responsibility onto the gun owner. They have also complained about how recovering seized weapons is a far more arduous process than losing them.

For the time being, the law’s supporters are still trying to get the word out, given its modest adoption a decade on.

There’s no such thing as too much attention for the measures considering their role in saving lives, said Amy Barnhorst, a psychiatry professor at the UC Davis School of Medicine and associate director of the UC Davis Centers for Violence Prevention.

She stressed that the restraining orders are not a side-door tactic to take guns from people. The legal maneuvers are distinct from weapons-prohibition laws and regulations that she said lack precision in identifying problematic situations.

“Prohibitions are broad and not targeted, and get a lot of wrong people, but miss the right people,” Barnhorst said. “Gun violence restraining orders target the right people. It really focuses not on preventing people from owning guns, but getting firearms out of a bad situation.”

She recalled an instance where a man was detained by police and referred for psychiatric evaluation after he had been increasingly posting messages on social media telling people not to show up at his community college, juxtaposed with images of firearms.

“Filing a gun-violence restraining order was helpful to get the guns out of the equation, while you do an investigation,” Barnhorst said. “You don’t have time to let this guy go back to his house and his guns.”

Rosen referenced cases where prosecutors sought an order for a man who had posted social-media threats involving the San Jose Convention Center, and for a county employee who openly brandished and racked a handgun at work. He said his office also sought an order for a tech employee who had been recently fired from his job and expressed that “this workplace would be the next Columbine.”

Santa Clara County has a Gun Violence Task Force composed of officers and agents from local and federal law enforcement, dedicated to seizing guns from people who have been legally prohibited from having them because of a disqualifying condition, such as a felony conviction.

“We take it really seriously,” Rosen said. “Guns make a dispute that might, without guns, end with a bruise or a broken bone, and with guns becomes lethal.”

But the centralized approach Rosen oversees — in which his office essentially serves as the local clearinghouse to train and support police in the use of the orders — is not standard practice. Technically, any police agency in a county can file them in court, but because they are civil orders, installing a coordinated infrastructure, as in the South Bay, is a challenge for jurisdictions in need of the resources to maintain it.

In Contra Costa County, where just over a dozen orders were filed last year, District Attorney Diana Becton is looking to use federal grants to build a system that increases follow-through on restraining orders. That would include gun-violence restraining orders and domestic violence protective orders, which are among several kinds of orders that compel a restrained person to surrender firearms.

“We are recognizing the need for more coordinated effort and more resources,” Becton said.

That includes working with her county’s Family Justice Center, Employment and Human Services Department and Superior Court to improve communication and notification regarding restraining orders. She also highlighted a county task force staffed by Richmond and San Ramon police officers to “safely secure, store, track and return relinquished guns.”

“The task force is really designed to come up with protocols and recommendations about how we can be better coordinated,” she said. “We’re also trying to coordinate with our courts to make sure that law enforcement is getting timely information from them. So it’s working on a lot of different levels … to put together training and awareness for our entire county.”

In San Mateo County, the DA’s office trains local law enforcement about filing for gun-violence restraining orders, and has two detectives assigned to its Gun Violence Prevention Program to serve as county experts, said Bill Massey, chief of the agency’s Bureau of Investigation. But he also highlighted county efforts to get those who have elicited safety concerns to surrender firearms on their own.

“We really have stressed voluntary compliance, as that is the best and safest ‘enforcement’ step we can take,” Massey said.

Police agencies file the vast majority of gun-violence restraining orders on behalf of reporting parties, but the law was expanded in recent years so that spouses, partners, roommates, teachers and employers can also apply for them if they learn about someone who is making threats and is known to be armed. Barnhorst said this is important because it empowers those who have a “front row” seat to troubling behavior.

No matter how they are secured, Barnhorst said the point of the state’s latest efforts is to ensure people know about them.

“For them to be effective, they have to be utilized.”