A bill signed into law by Gov. Brown allows for guns to be taken from people deemed threats to themselves or others. The law was inspired by the Isla Vista massacre and supported by those that it affected personally. Patrick Healy reports from Isla Vista for the NBC4 News at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014.
Returning to Isla Vista is never easy for Bob Weiss, not since his daughter Veronika died here last May during a disturbed gunman's rampage.
But returning Wednesday, something was different: a sense that determination tempered by tragedy had led to progress in reducing the risk of gun violence.
For the first time since Veronika's death, Weiss was able to smile again as he stood in the same park where only four months ago a vigil had been held for Veronika and the other victims.
"It's a happy day today in Isla Vista because we did something," Weiss told a group that had gathered to mark Gov. Brown's signing of Assembly Bill 1014. It enables courts to order guns be taken from individuals seen by family or law enforcement to be in such a mental state that they pose a threat to themselves or others.
Much like the process for domestic violence restraining orders, the ruling could be made initially without the subject being present, but for the order to remain in effect, a hearing would have to be held within three weeks.
"We're gathered here because California has taken a major step forward in protecting families," said Richard Martinez, whose son Christopher, 20, was also slain in the May 23 rampage. He, like Veronika, 19, and the four others slain, were students at UC Santa Barbara.
The perpetrator, who authorities said also used his BMW as a weapon to strike bicyclists and pedestrians, was identified as Elliot Rodger, 22, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
In personal videos he posted on YouTube, and in an autobiography he distributed through the internet, Rodger ranted about the unhappiness in his life, blaming women for not dating him, and vowing "retribution."
Rodger's family had become concerned about his mental state and asked the Sheriff's department to check on his welfare.
Rodger convinced them there was no problem.
In his call for retribution, he wrote of his relief deputies did not search his room, for they would have found the firearms he had acquired.
Within hours of the shooting, Martinez had traveled to Isla Vista, and in his grief, demanded "not one more," and challenged a society that has become victimized by mass shootings in recent decades, many of them targeting students, to shake off its complacency about such tragedies.
Lawmakers responded with AB 1014, and a second bill, SB505 that would require law enforcement to check gun registration when asked to check on an individual with mental health concerns.
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Both Martinez and Weiss traveled to the state capital and worked tirelessly to encourage passage of the bills. Their authors -- Assemblyman Das Williams, D-Isla Vista, and state Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara -- both gave credit to Martinez and Weiss.
