The Walnut Creek City Council unanimously passed an ordinance Tuesday requiring city gun owners to lock up firearms in a residence.
The ordinance requires stored, unsupervised firearms to be secured with gun locks or in a locked container. The locking requirements apply to firearms that are not being legally carried.
Legal firearm owners may still carry loaded and unlocked firearms in their home at any time. The safe storage requirements also permit legal owners to store their firearms fully loaded.
Council member Kevin Wilk said Wednesday the ordinance is about education, not criminalizing guns.
“We want to get the word out and promote this ordinance as a way to help prevent accidents, tragedies, and save lives,” Wilk said.
A staff report for Tuesday’s meeting said California already has a law that “makes it a crime for a person to negligently store or leave a firearm in any location within premises under the person’s custody or control, and do so when the owner knows, or should know, that a child is likely to gain access to it without a parent or guardian’s permission, unless reasonable action is taken by the person to secure the firearm against access by the child.”
The report also said “Currently, there is no state law that requires safety devices, such as lock boxes or trigger locks, be used on all firearms stored in a residence.”
Several Bay Area cities, including Antioch and Pleasanton, have laws requiring gun owners to keep them locked up.
The report cites a 2017 Pew Research Center survey finding 42 percent of adults live in a gun-owning household. Roughly a third of U.S. homes with children have guns and an estimated 4.6 million children live with unlocked, loaded guns in the home.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in 2020 there were 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the United States, and 54 percent (22,292) of the firearm-related deaths were suicides.
The report also cites a 2008 report published in the New England Journal of Medicine saying living in a home with guns increases the risk of death by homicide by between 40 percent and 170 percent, and the risk of suicide by 90 percent to 460 percent.
Watch out for the enforcement actions: no knock warrants; innocent citizens killed in mistaken raids; dead police officers when citizens taken defensive measures to protect hearth and home. If they don’t raid home to ensure citizens are obeying this law, why bother having it? Laws on the books already require gun owners to take measures to prevent kids from getting their hands on firearms. Seems like leadership grandstanding.
ATTENTION CRIPS, BLOODS, VARIOUS BAD GUYS & OTHER SCUM –
Walnut Creek is now pretty much a gun free TARGET RICH zone. Thanks to the idiots, guns must be locked and stored where inaccessible in an emergency.
But…….FEAR NOT…….when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
Remember this every time you vote.
You should read the announcement. You can have as many guns laying around the house as you desire as long as they are under your “supervision.”
I’m sure you are allowed to delegate supervision to someone else, such as your dog, or security cameras.
If you need to leave the house unsupervised then put the guns away in a locked cabinet. If you have so many guns they you need a full room then set up a secured armory.
YES YES YES!!!!!!
All true. Remember when things go “Bump” in the night. Better go unlock the safe. Asinine people in these governments. Also people who live in the best neighborhoods with security walls and armed guards. Not we subjects who are fresh meat for the goblins.
WC Resident,
Exactly! Reading comprehension can be a difficult thing these days.
I agree, firearms should be secured. Especially with felons wandering around with no incentive to be lawfull, or respect law abiding citizens.
Innocent law abiding citizens are also put in danger, if they can’t access their firearms quickly.
REDUNDANCY???
Are they coming to my house to check? What are they thinking?
🙄 no. This law is used so that if your gun is used in a crime you can’t just claim it was stolen and avoid responsibility. You would be charged with negligence and face a penalty for your carelessness
How sensible! A victim of a crime (burglary) gets hit with a crime because the police can’t find crooks and when they do judges let so many scumbags loose with no or minimal jail time. I see they left “legally carried” firearms off the list, yet try and get a concealed carry permit in CC County! I looked at the process – it was very complicated and expensive, plus you need to renew it frequently. I said “Screw it” and just carry anyway. Oops, forget I said that!
Matt,
The ordinance also includes the cable locks sold with guns, you could just claim that the bad guys cut the cable after the gun was stolen.
108RS
🖕
Well…. there it is…. a new low.
Congratulations on the most worthless post ever Snakekeeper.
Another report might also cite a different study saying living in a home with motor vehicles increases the risk of death by suicide, accident, and/or homicide by a greater percentage than guns. More people die in motor vehicles than die from guns.
But there’s no political traction to gain from vehicles, so nobody’s making a stink about that.
I’d sooner put my confidence in Moe, Larry, And Curly.
😆
…. not surprised … I don’t see an effective date … Jan. 1, 2023?
This ordinance is so stupid. By the way, how it is enforced? Look like the libs are going to take way guns.
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What is the enforcement mechanism and penalty?
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I would assume if there was an incident involving your firearm and it was determined that it was not secured then you get legally screwed over.
So illegal gun owners MUST lock them up. LEGAL gun owners can keep them loaded and unlocked. Sounds like a plan, happy to comply. I hope the ILLEGAL gun owners get the memo…
So lock up your daughter
Lock up your wife
Lock up your back door
And run for your life
‘cuz I’m TNT
How about teaching gun safety in schools rather than implementing an unenforceable ordinance. This would be the real definition of education.
That is the way (one way) it used to be done. Now students are kept ignorant, scared on the one hand by the news media and adults that never learn gun safety and thrilled on the other by video games and movies that show how NOT to treat firearms.
Training when I was growing up was the main function of the NRA. And I respected them for that. Now they are just the political arm of the firearm industry and do not care to provide much in the way of training.
If you buy a gun for protection, you are not going to have a lock on it.
No, just in a safe. I personally have a quick access safe where I can get to is in seconds but its secured if you don’t know the combination.
Everything in my house is locked up when the door shuts.
Do you need the gov. to tell you to secure, medicine, sharp objects, checks, cash, chemicals, alcohol, garden tools, ropes, ….what the hell?
How the overseers hate the citizens.
Already laws on the books so…nice virtue signal.
All the statistics presented and yet the most important statistic of all not mentioned. The majority of violent crimes and misdemeanors are committed by blacks. I believe I saw a figure of 90 %. Go ask the residents of Chicago. So what is WC council going to do about the epidemic of black violent crime increasing exponentially in the city? Are they going to encourage more high density housing that mandates a racial quota? Where is the educational outreach? Are they going to tell us to just put up with armed robbery at Broadway Plaza and look the other way when verbally assault by crack addicted shoplifters? This council needs to rebalance its virtue signaling. We are getting way to many liberal causes pushed on the citizens and nothing that acknowledges reality.
@Greg
No such thing as a good guy with a gun you say?
I agree.
After we ban all guns and weapons for civilians in general, let’s disarm our police forces and military as well.
I’m sure at that point when every weapon in everyone’s hands is banned, weapons especially guns will cease to exist and will simply dissapear, and all violent crime will fall to Absolutely 0%.
Oh yeah… The off-duty border patrol agent who killed the Texas school shooter because the police were too scared, whos barber gave him a shotgun? That barber should of never gave him the shotgun, because that was an illegal firearms transfer. The border patrol agent trespassed onto school grounds with a firearm which is also illegal. Luckily Texas is an open carry state, because in California there is a law against open carrying firearms in public, especially shotguns. And if the gun is not registered to you and loaded in public, automatic felony. And then he used that firearm to commit an act of vigilantism by killing the shooter instead of letting the on duty police officers in that jurisdiction do that job, which could at least count as a manslaughter charge here in California.
All because the law is more important than the situation at hand.
So good guy with a gun doesn’t exist in your book I guess, just a crazed vigilant with someone else’s gun storming a homicidal mass murderers shooting gallery and killing them.
Makes sense.
Well said.
There is little interest in reality. In a way WC is mirroring the management style of our current administration: Make knee-jerk decisions to appease the self righteous. No science, no data, no root causes, no research, no reality. And as crime skyrockets scratch their n*** and wonder what went wrong.
The re-election of Becton is a bellwether for Contra Costa. It’s also a warning.
The WC city council isn’t interested in facts. They choose the studies that support their liberal agenda, and pretend that they’re doing “something.”….
They have no clue – and neither does their staff.
All liars..
@The Fearless Spectator….You have to find them before you scratch them.
I’m glad I got out of WC before it got the Section 8 housing and all this 13% crime wave stuff. WC will be just like Oakland before long. Good luck with that.
When a home invader breaks in, I will confront him and say
“Hold on good buddy, let me go to my safe, unlock it, grab my gun, load it, chamber it, and then I can challenge you to a duel”
It takes me less than 30 seconds to get to my safe, get my gun out and chamber a round (it stays loaded but not chambered)… So maybe 10 seconds (or less) longer than you getting it out of an unsecured drawer… Maybe you need a better safe? I have a quick access one just for my pistol.
@ERas 30 seconds is a long time in reality to defend yourself from some already holding a weapon.
Does Walnut Creek have a problem with “fire arm related deaths”? What the is the ordinance trying to fix. Will they show a metric a year after this is implemented to show that it reduced the “fire arm related deaths”?
Nah – they’re just pretending to do something .
No effect on anything and there’s no problem in WC.
Useless politicians at your “service.”
CDC Admission: Guns Used Far More Often in Self-Defense Than Crime
The CDC would rather not publicize anything that would cast a bad light on the argument for more gun control so purposely did not promote their findings on a study of defensive gun use that was done in 2013 commissioned by President Obama. It should have been headline news.
https://tinyurl.com/yc4p93f9
https://tinyurl.com/mry5u5du
So they don’t want to put people in jail, they let crime and break ins have no consequences. Criminals become more bold and they expect us to not have protection handy? How about they start prosecuting Criminals and get crime down, then talk to us about not having guns around.
Matt,
The ordinance also includes the cable locks sold with guns, you could just claim that the bad guys cut the cable after the gun was stolen.
108RS
2021 Deaths by cause, which is more dangerous?
https://tinyurl.com/5xh3f68k
297 Deaths caused by Govt, including 200 women & children
https://tinyurl.com/9x76kfju
The collapse of law & order in democrat police state
https://tinyurl.com/yc2e43h6
All gun laws are illegal. Molon Labe. Protect the 2nd amendment.
Hopefully this will be enforced by our local City of Walnut Creek Police. Some areas of Walnut Creek are “unincorporated” – so hopefully that will be handled by the Sheriff assigned to that area.
I personally have very unstable and dangerous “family” who preach love, light, bliss (yet have a whole arsenal of dangerous (unlocked) weapons)).
That is ironic as I am more libertarian in my beliefs – (yet I have no weapons).
Is there going to be a “tip off” hotline ?
I smell a rat in that clam bake!
I’m glad I got out of WC before it got the Section 8 housing and all this 13% crime wave stuff. WC will be just like Oakland before long. Good luck with that.
This is already something that’s engrained when purchasing a gun at the gun store. You literally have to take a competency test in order to get a “permit” to buy handguns or ping guns. This isn’t anything new. Educate yourselves on gun purchasing instead of believing made up stories about gun ownership.