As California tries lớn crack down on crime, it secured a sizable victory for its strict gun control laws on Tuesday.
That’s when a federal appeals court reinstated California’s bans on the sale and possession of high-capacity magazines that can funnel more than 10 rounds of ammunition into a single firearm. The 7-4 ruling from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — which gun rights activists plan to appeal to lớn the U.S. Supreme Court — overturns a prior ruling from U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez that declared California’s large-capacity magazine ban unconstitutional. It also suggests that the appeals court will likely uphold the Golden State’s ban on assault weapons, which Benitez deemed unconstitutional in a controversial June ruling that likened an AR-15 rifle lớn a Swiss Army knife.
Also Tuesday, the Los Angeles city Council unanimously voted lớn ban ghost guns, untraceable firearms built from components bought online or produced by a 3d printer. A recent new york Times investigation found that ghost guns accounted for a whopping 25% to 50% of firearms recovered at crime scenes in Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego and San Francisco in the past 18 months.
The gun crackdown comes amid a surge in smash-and-grab robberies that’s prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom and local leaders to call for tougher measures khổng lồ combat organized crime. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin — who’s facing a recall election in June — plans khổng lồ charge nine people who ransacked a series of San Francisco stores with felony looting, though experts say that particular charge could pose significant legal hurdles. Và following Oakland’s 118th homicide of the year, Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong vowed Tuesday lớn arrest the perpetrators.
But one of the most violent places in California isn’t a big city. It’s Kern County, population 900,000, in the southernmost band of the Central Valley. Since 2016, it’s had the highest homicide rate of any California county. Và last year, about one out of every 8,000 of its residents was murdered. nasaconstellation.com’ Nigel Duara takes a closer look at what’s going on.
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Other stories you should know
1. California prison practices in spotlight
In other criminal justice news, California could move dozens of permanently medically incapacitated inmates from nursing homes back to lớn state prisons — a move it says is necessary lớn comply with new federal rules for nursing trang chủ licensing, the Associated Press reports. Under the new state policy, only inmates connected khổng lồ ventilators would be eligible for medical parole — which advocates say could force about 70 of the 210 inmates currently approved for medical parole back behind bars. But the feds say California could avoid such a drastic move by placing the inmates in nursing homes that aren’t federally regulated. When state lawmakers return to lớn Sacramento in January, they will consider a bill that would make it easier khổng lồ house incapacitated inmates in community health care facilities.
California’s approach to lớn the death penalty has also come under scrutiny, with U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco arguing in a recent ruling that the state is essentially “flushing massive amounts of taxpayer money down the toilet” by continuing khổng lồ litigate death penalty sentences despite Newsom’s moratorium on executions. Since it’s extremely unlikely that California will execute anyone in the near future, Chhabria wrote, the state should consider resentencing some Death Row inmates to life in prison — a move that could save taxpayers $170 million annually.
2. Concerns multiply over school finances
One of the biggest challenges that state lawmakers will face when they return lớn Sacramento in January: figuring out how to keep schools from falling off a financial cliff. That was made evident in a Tuesday legislative hearing, during which education experts told lawmakers that two straight years of massive budget surpluses won’t be enough for most school districts to offset financial losses partly caused by declining enrollment & surging chronic absenteeism amid the pandemic. But the problem goes beyond COVID-19: California’s birth rate has been declining for years, resulting in fewer kids attending public schools — and therefore less money for schools, whose funding is partially based on enrollment & attendance numbers. The implication: Lawmakers may have to change how public schools are funded.
Meanwhile, how school districts are spending a sizable portion of their budget remains unclear. A whopping 76% of school districts either failed lớn report employee salary data in 2020 or returned non-compliant data, according khổng lồ a Tuesday report from State Controller Betty Yee. Yet the budget situation at San Francisco Unified is so dire that California recently hired a fiscal consultant khổng lồ intervene. & on Monday, the California Department of Education gave the Alameda County Office of Education the green light khổng lồ closely monitor Oakland Unified’s finances và hiring practices over concerns that it won’t be able lớn balance its budget.
3. Could GOP gain influence post-redistricting?
What would help Republicans gain relevance in a California Legislature so dominated by Democrats that not a single GOP vote is needed khổng lồ pass tax increases or put constitutional amendments on the ballot? Flipping at least seven seats in the Assembly và five in the state Senate, nasaconstellation.com’ Sameea Kamal & Jeremia Kimelman report. That could conceivably happen in next year’s election — which will be the first lớn use new district boundaries that an independent commission is rushing to finalize before Christmas. But while redistricting could determine California’s shade of blue, it won’t change the fact that it’s a xanh state, experts say. It’s a different story in the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans only need to lớn flip five seats nationwide to take control; California may have inadvertently helped their cause by losing a House seat for the first time in history.
To visualize how the proposed maps could change the partisan makeup of the state Legislature và California’s House delegation, kiểm tra out the cool graphics in Sameea & Jeremia’s story.
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nasaconstellation.com commentary
nasaconstellation.com columnist Dan Walters: Political reaction lớn a spate of smash-and-grab retail thefts indicates that crime could be a hot button issue in California’s elections next year.
Police reform starts with meaningful training: California legislators have too often heaped additional training requirements on law enforcement officers without evaluating how effective those requirements actually are, argue Pedro Nava và Janna Sidley of the Little Hoover Commission.
Fortifying California’s climate resilience: Clean energy and backup nguồn at the household & community màn chơi can help supply electricity when the grid goes down, write Patrick Murphy & Lee Ann Hill of Physicians, Scientists và Engineers for Healthy Energy.
Xem thêm: Hướng Dẫn Xem Số Báo Danh Sách Số Báo Danh Thi Tuyển Sinh Lớp 10 2021
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