Murder by drive-by shooting has reached epidemic levels in California.
An average of more than one young person under the age of 18 was a victim of a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles alone every week in 1991, according to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine; 36 of these youths died.
The study found that drive-by shootings are no longer confined to the inner city, but have spread everywhere. Because the shooting is done from a moving vehicle, too often the victim is an unintended target--an innocent child, a high school student with no gang affiliation, a young mother who happens to live in a neighborhood targeted by drive-by shooters, or a harmless passer-by.
It's got to stop.
Proposition 196 would put drive-by shooters on notice that they can be subjected to the strongest penalty California can impose: the death penalty.
Proposition 196 would allow the death penalty, or life in prison without possibility of parole, for intentional, cold-blooded, first-degree murder committed by the discharge of a firearm from a motor vehicle at a person outside the vehicle.
Please help us free our society from the senseless outrage of drive-by murder. Vote YES on Proposition 196.
RUBEN S. AYALA
State Senator, 32nd District
GREGORY D. TOTTEN
Executive Director, California District
Attorneys Association