Mixer: California gun-control program firing blanks

Gun sales in California continue to rise.

According to the Attorney General’s office, there were close to a million guns sold last year.

An increase of close to 100 percent since 2010.

And of all the people who applied for a background check in 2014, fewer than 9,000 were denied. Less than one percent.

In a report released last week by California’s state auditor, a program to recover guns from people prohibited from owning them is running way behind — by 3,600 cases in the first quarter of this year alone.

It’s an issue that keeps coming up because of mass shootings in Isla Vista – near UC-Santa Barbara, Aurora, Colo., Newtown, Conn., and – most recently – last night in Louisiana, where suspects in those cases were known to have past mental health issues.

There’s also a Johns Hopkins University survey that says about 40 percent of felons convicted of gun-related offenses were illegal gun owners when they committed the offense.

Kate Wheeling is a reporter who wrote about the ‘Armed Prohibited Persons System’ and how the program works.

It’s the only system of its kind in the country, which matches people who are mentally ill or have a criminal history to gun ownership records.

She joined us on the Mixer.