AB 1598: Gun violence: firearm safety education.

Existing law states that the state has a compelling interest in protecting its citizens from gun violence and from intimidation by persons brandishing weapons. Existing law generally regulates the manufacture, distribution, transportation, and importation of specified firearms.

Existing law requires persons who obtain firearms to have familiarity with those firearms, including the safe handling and storage of firearms. Existing law requires a purchaser or receiver of a firearm to hold a valid firearm safety certificate. Existing law requires the Department of Justice to prescribe a minimum level of skill, knowledge, and competency to be required of all firearm safety certificate instructors, authorizes those instructors to issue firearm safety certificates to persons over 18 years of age, and requires the department to develop a test that a person is required to pass in order to earn a firearm safety certificate. Existing law allows a firearm safety certificate instructor to collect a fee of $25 for administering the test and issuing the firearm safety certificate, $15 of which is to be paid to the department to cover the departments costs to carry out and enforce specified laws.

This bill would require the department, at the next regularly scheduled update of the test, to update the items the test covers to include the reasons for and risks of owning a firearm and bringing a firearm into the home, including the increased risk of death to someone in the household by suicide, homicide, or unintentional injury, and current law as it relates to eligibility to own or possess a firearm, gun violence restraining orders, domestic violence restraining orders, and privately manufactured firearms.

The bill would require the department to prepare a firearm safety certificate study guide, in English and in Spanish, that explains the information covered in the test, and would require the department to offer copies of the study guide at actual cost to firearm safety instructors, who would be required to provide a study guide to an applicant for a firearm safety certificate prior to their test date. The bill would allow an instructor to add the cost of the study guide to the fee above. The bill would additionally require the department to design a pamphlet in English and in Spanish that explains the reasons for and risks of firearm ownership and to make the pamphlet available on its internet website. The bill would require licensed firearm dealers to provide a purchaser, transferee, or person being loaned a firearm the pamphlet.

This bill would incorporate additional changes to Section 31640 of the Penal Code proposed by AB 724 to be operative only if this bill and AB 724 are enacted and this bill is enacted last.

This bill would require the department to prepare the study guide and the pamphlet in additional languages including Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, Dari, and Armenian only if AB 724 is enacted and requires the test to be in those languages.