Color Coded CA gun law Map

[warbird]

This law was seriously flawed from the start and patchwork fixes are not going to work. I know of schools in my area where nearly every house has a gun that is within a thousand yards of that school and people go by those schools every day with guns in their cars both locked up and as legitimate CCW's. The law does not bother or stop the criminal but it does make criminals out of law biding citizens just trying to do their daily business. The law needs to be repealed not "fixed" since it will never stop a deranged person from coming on to a school grounds to shoot children. However it will disarm honest citizens thus making them additional targets.

[curtisfong]

two words

"sentence enhancement"

That's why CLEO loves these laws. That and because selective enforcement is a wonderful tool.

Have you ever heard of a CLEO who wanted less laws, or more narrowly crafted laws?

[Librarian]

Unfortunately (as others have pointed out) a 1000' radius circle does not enclose areas that are 1000' from a school BOUNDARY, only 1000' from the center of the school.

All we have is a database of school addresses, with serious questions about accuracy and completeness. Based on addresses, we don't have the center of the school property, we have a point on a street.

There's a school up the street from me. The address is on the westerly side of the property. 1000' east of that is still within the school fence line. If we were to relocate the point to the center of the property, the 1000' radius circle would be around 500' too small in radius.

And circles are used in these examples, because they are quick and dirty, easily produced markers; they are NOT good representations of the GF school zones.

[Kestryll]

I was working on this for a little while with another friend of mine, and the task was basically impossible.
You can't just determine the center of a school grounds and then draw a 1000 foot circle around it. You have to draw a polygon around the edge of the actual property.
What's required is thousands of man-hours and quality GIS software to pull it off.

Unlike say a "Porn Shop", the 1000 foot school zone presents a problem for gun owners because we don't have to just deal with school zones in one geographical area, we have to deal with them everywhere we travel.

Also, the Cal. department of education doesn't put schools with fewer than 6 or 10 (can't remember which) into the database. One of the primary methods for parents to legally home school in CA is to register themselves as a private school. Since CA GFSZ law includes private schools there is no way to create an accurate and inclusive map.

Looking at these three posts has me wondering.
Can the effort to make a map that failed due to scope and lack of available information, the non-stationary nature of firearms transport/carry and the Dept. of education not providing accurate maps of school locations be used to show that this law creates an undue, excessive or unrealistic burden on the exercise of a Constitutionally protected civil right?

[obeygiant]

Nope. Try ArcGIS. Good luck, the license costs about ten thousand dollars.

If I was still at university, and had access to the ESRI ArcGIS software (designed to help solve EXACTLY this type of problem), I would be able to solve this problem handily. I'd just get the data off the Internet, select all school property, and buffer it to 1,000 feet (it's a little bit technical). Unfortunately I have left university, and the software costs about $10,000.

I like where you are going with this but....

It actually can't be done, at least right now, because some counties do not have a GIS department let alone data to provide. Of the counties that do have GIS departments, many of them do not have the parcel/property data for schools.

ETA:
We do have access to ArcGIS as well as a GIS instructor for a UC school.

Looking at these three posts has me wondering.
Can the effort to make a map that failed due to scope and lack of available information, the non-stationary nature of firearms transport/carry and the Dept. of education not providing accurate maps of school locations be used to show that this law creates an undue, excessive or unrealistic burden on the exercise of a Constitutionally protected civil right?

For the reasons mentioned in my quote above it is an impossible endeavor at this point and I too have wondered if it can be challenged on that basis.

ETA:
For further reading

[5thgen4runner]

Looking at these three posts has me wondering.
Can the effort to make a map that failed due to scope and lack of available information, the non-stationary nature of firearms transport/carry and the Dept. of education not providing accurate maps of school locations be used to show that this law creates an undue, excessive or unrealistic burden on the exercise of a Constitutionally protected civil right?

Good point

[Librarian]

(b) Any person who possesses a firearm in a place that the
person knows, or reasonably should know, is a school zone,

I think it may be possible to establish that 'reasonably' excludes $10,000 software packages and the training to use it as a precondition to 'knowing'.

[wildhawker]

Looking at these three posts has me wondering.
Can the effort to make a map that failed due to scope and lack of available information, the non-stationary nature of firearms transport/carry and the Dept. of education not providing accurate maps of school locations be used to show that this law creates an undue, excessive or unrealistic burden on the exercise of a Constitutionally protected civil right?

There's 2 problems with this:

1) Current non-recognition of right to bear in public. The present remedy for self-defense is, is in Peruta, those under 12031 (UOC, "emergency" carry). There's not presently a "right" that's being "infringed" or "burdened" (in the eyes of the courts).

2) Post-recognition of right to bear and establishment of permit system free from prior restraint. California's PC 12050 licenses exempt the licensee from both state and federal GFSZ (when bearing in accordance with their permit). Accordingly, the GFSZ does not subject the licensee to any substantive burden, except if the licensee is not bearing or transporting as required by law. (Those requirements may themselves be unconstitutional, but are not material to the constitutionality of GFSZs.)

GFSZs have real constitutional problems, but we very likely will need to hold on another circuit finding them unconstitutional.

-Brandon

[wildhawker]

I think it may be possible to establish that 'reasonably' excludes $10,000 software packages and the training to use it as a precondition to 'knowing'.

How about the training to request and/or compile GIS data from reticent government sources?

[Librarian]

How about the training to request and/or compile GIS data from reticent government sources?

That shifts 'reasonably' onto the school districts, in the idea of the reasonableness of keeping the database current, and the initial cost.

I'm good with that.

Districts that are dumping counselors, librarians, music programs and sports teams may wish to prioritize their spending differently - but perhaps they could be persuaded that is an obligation imposed by the law. If so, they might ask the Legislature to relieve them of that burden; a sensible State government (we may see one someplace in this country, though I do not know where or when), one that counts its pennies () would choose to repeal the law rather than accept the mapping and publication task.

[Uxi]

Instead the Teachers Union would take out loans and spend millions in advertising fighting any such repeal with claims that it's "for the children"

[Librarian]

Instead the Teachers Union would take out loans and spend millions in advertising fighting any such repeal with claims that it's "for the children"

... rather than spend the money to actually implement it. Perfectly consistent with past behaviors.

[rubdub]

Also, the Cal. department of education doesn't put schools with fewer than 6 or 10 (can't remember which) into the database. One of the primary methods for parents to legally home school in CA is to register themselves as a private school. Since CA GFSZ law includes private schools there is no way to create an accurate and inclusive map.

Could this be grounds to have the law dismissed (or at least re-written)?

[dantodd]

I do believe that this is an absolutely impossible law to obey. The entirety of every prosecution would rest on "should reasonably know" which, if I remember correctly, the judge forbade Theseus from bringing up in his trial.

The greater question is if this is worth pursuing now or if it is better to wait until the right to carry is established and we can put the burden directly on the state to show why 1000' surrounding every school is a "sensitive place." It seems the latter is simpler especially since we do not have open carry in the state and concealed carry is exempt.

But it would be fun if you could ruin a "gun buy back" by identifying a private home school within 1000' and have the school notify everyone by signage that it is a GFSZ and no guns are permitted. Then have them demand police arrest anyone who enters without the school's permission. I believe a LEO MUST arrest if he witnesses a felony if there is a complaint. It would be fun to shut down a few "buy backs" in a row.

[goober]

For the reasons mentioned in my quote above it is an impossible endeavor at this point and I too have wondered if it can be challenged on that basis.

ETA:
For further reading

Yep, me and obeygiant worked pretty hard on this a few years ago, just gathering the data was an immense chore (he did most of it).
The problem (as has been mentioned) is that you need parcel data (property bounds) for the schools, not just their point locations. Parcel data can be hard to obtain and is often not free.

Vetting/validating the data is another huge chore, and the potential liability issues that come with getting it wrong mean that the database would have to be continually edited and verified (both in terms of existing schools and their parcel boundaries).

But the technical aspect of buffering the parcels once you have them is pretty easy using any GIS package, including open source applications. An ArcGIS license isn't needed (although that is what I was using).

So, for the reasons mentioned, we abandoned the project. It would be great to have a GFSZ augmented reality app on your smartphone, but unless somebody wants to spend some money on developing (and defending) it, I'm with obeygiant and don't think it's a viable endeavor.