Attorney General Bonta Announces Nearly $3 Million in Grant Funding Awarded to Five Sheriff’s Departments to Help Seize Weapons from Prohibited Persons

OAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced the California Department of Justice (DOJ) has awarded nearly $3 million to five county sheriff’s departments to support activities related to seizing weapons and ammunition from individuals prohibited from possessing them. The sheriffs of Kings, Lassen, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Ventura counties applied for and will receive grant funding through DOJ’s Gun Violence Reduction Program. 
 
“There’s no doubt about it: strong gun safety laws save lives and California leads the way. Our Armed and Prohibited Persons System, or APPS, is still the only one of its kind nationwide, used to monitor and retrieve firearms from the hands of individuals no longer legally allowed to possess them,” said Attorney General Bonta. “But we also know that stopping gun violence is a team effort. That's why we work with law enforcement partners on the ground to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals. And today, we're proud to award this grant funding to five of our law enforcement partners in order to advance this critical work. Together, we are protecting California's communities from violence before it even happens.”
 
When it was deployed in 2006, DOJ’s Armed and Prohibited Persons System (APPS) was a first-of-its-kind system used to notify DOJ about individuals who legally purchased or acquired firearms and later became prohibited from owning or possessing them. Together with other California law enforcement agencies, DOJ special agents help prevent and reduce incidents of violent crime by using APPS to locate and seize firearms or ammunition from prohibited persons. The goal of the Gun Violence Reduction Program is to increase local law enforcement’s resources and capacity to help DOJ reduce the number of prohibited individuals in APPS faster.
 
Funding for the Gun Violence Reduction Program was provided by the California Budget Act of 2021. In this grant cycle, a total of $2,789,487 will be made available and will be awarded by January 1, 2023. DOJ will award grants in amounts between $250,000 and $1 million per applicant. 
 
Details of the award amounts can be found here.

Gun violence remains a growing threat to public safety. Attorney General Bonta is addressing this issue strategically and aggressively by:

• Launching a first-in-the-nation Office of Gun Violence Prevention, dedicated to developing strategies and working with stakeholders statewide to address the gun violence epidemic and to provide the public with information and resources to help further reduce gun violence;
• Advocating for commonsense gun laws including by sponsoring Assembly Bill 1594 to increase accountability for the firearm industry, working to strengthen federal laws to protect the public from ghost guns, and successfully defending California’s laws to prevent gun violence;
• Seizing guns from prohibited persons in the Armed and Prohibited Persons System, and through multiagency sweeps in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County, conducting operations targeting individuals attempting to illegally purchase guns, and collaborating with local law enforcement partners; 
• Ending the sale of illegal firearms through litigation against ghost gun retailers and by putting a stop to the sale of illegal assault weapons in Orange County; and
• By stopping the sale of devices wrongly marketed by a gun parts manufacturer as a way to evade California’s assault weapon laws