California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday released a report on the links between domestic violence and shootings, one day before the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in a case that could restrict the power of federal lawmakers to regulate gun possession nationwide.
At the heart of the Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Rahimi, is a Second Amendment challenge to a federal law that disarms people with certain domestic violence restraining orders. Bonta said the argument against the law is that people who’ve committed violence against family or their intimate partners should be allowed to access guns even after a judge has ruled that the victim survivors need court-ordered protections for their safety.
“These are people who have demonstrated a significant danger of abuse, of violence, who have a higher risk of perpetrating future violence, including mass shootings,” Bonta told reporters at a news conference Monday in Sacramento. “I can’t fathom how this is something we are debating.”
But an An Arizona man was arrested Nov. 7 on suspicion of murder in the death of a woman whose body was found in the trunk of a car outside a residence in Huntington Beach, police said Tuesday.
34-year- old Richard Paul Rodriguez of Holbrook, Arizona, was arrested and booked on one count of PC 187(a) Murder.
Police in Holbrook, Arizona, confirmed to reporters that the victim was 54-year-old Christi Lynn Romero.
Holbrook police noted that Romero had obtained a protective order against Rodriguez, and it was served on him on Nov. 2.
The data released by Bonta showed there were more than 670 total domestic violence gun homicides reported statewide between 2018 and 2022. The report’s figures also showed that during the coronavirus pandemic, the number of domestic violence calls involving firearms spiked dramatically while the number of domestic violence restraining order filings declined.
