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President Biden advocates for gun legislation Colorado mass shooting puts spotlight on assault weapons By ANNELISE HANSHAW NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
President Joe Biden is advocating for the Senate to pass two background-check bills after 10 people, including a police officer, were killed in a mass shooting Monday in Boulder, Colorado. Prior to the shooting at King Soopers grocery store and the series of murders earlier this month in Atlanta, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution
8 and House Resolution 1446 on March 11. H.R. 8, known as the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, would make the private sales of guns illegal without a licensed dealer to run background checks. H.R. 1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021, closes the “Charleston Loophole,” which allows the sale of guns after three business days even without a completed background check. The loophole infamously allowed
Dylann Roof, who would not have passed a background check, to purchase a gun. Days later, he murdered nine black churchgoers in South Carolina in 2015. H.R. 1446 first passed in the house in 2019 but didn’t make it to the Senate floor. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, vowed to bring both bills to the Senate but did not give a timeline when asked by CNN Tuesday. U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara, voted in favor of both bills.
“You should be able go to work, school, or the grocery store without living in fear of gun violence. I’ve voted to expand background checks, close loopholes, & introduced a bill to temporarily disarm individuals in crisis. If we enact these laws, we can save lives,” Rep. Carbajal tweeted Tuesday. Monday’s tragedy occurred 10 days after a Colorado judge lifted an assault weapons ban in Boulder. The suspect purchased a Ruger AR-556
March 16, according to national reports. The gun is legally classified as a pistol (because its barrel is less than 16 inches) but shares many features of AR-15 rifles. The gun was prohibited in the now-void ban by the city of Boulder, according to a Denver Post report. The gun is illegal in California as part of the state’s assault weapons ban. Police did not specify the gun used in Monday’s shooting. Please see guns on B4
Instrumental Music to close State Street landmark shuts its doors to locals and music makers
A virtual Passover Congregation B’nai B’rith to hold second Zoom Passover seder
By MADISON HIRNEISEN NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
By ANNELISE HANSHAW
After 25 years in business, Instrumental Music in Santa Barbara is taking its final bow and moving forward with plans to shut its doors in April. With guitars and ukuleles lining the walls, the store stood as a State Street landmark through the years and struck a chord with locals both literally and figuratively. Despite the company’s loyal customer base, the rise in operational costs, a consumer surge in online shopping and the COVID-19 pandemic are all factors in the location’s closure, Bryan McCann, the company’s owner and founder, told the NewsPress Tuesday. “It’s a regret to leave, but since our founding in 1979, we have made a lot of adjustments to changes in the marketplace … The best way forward for us to maintain Instrumental Music is to consolidate the locations and focus on providing a more significant experience for the guitar buyer at our Thousand Oaks location,” Mr. McCann said. The closure on State Street comes just a year after the company shut down its Ventura location in January 2020. With just one store remaining, Instrumental Music will now showcase all of its inventory at the Thousand Oaks location with plans to expand the company’s online presence in the coming months. For Dominic Pino, a member of the music shop’s senior sales staff, closing the doors feels like a heavy loss. Even before joining the Instrumental Music staff nearly a decade ago, Mr. Pino can remember hanging out at the shop as a teenager and meeting the members of his first band. “For me, I just kind of feel bad for the musicians in Santa Barbara County just because this is like one of the last real, visceral, physical music shops where you can come in and sit down and play some guitars and potentially meet other musicians,” Mr. Pino told the News-Press at the State Street store. “I mean, how I found my first band (was) by coming into a music shop and sitting and just
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
Congregation B’nai B’rith is celebrating Passover virtually for the second consecutive year. The Santa Barbara synagogue will celebrate Passover, which begins at sundown Saturday, through April 3. Other Jewish congregations will observe Passover through April 4. “The experience of Zooming to Passover again is really making us fully aware that we have been in this pandemic for a full year,” Rabbi Stephen Cohen told the News-Press Tuesday. Passover, as described in the Torah, celebrates the Israelites’ freedom from slavery under ancient Egypt and the 10th plague on Egypt “passing over” the houses of the Israelites. Please see passover on A2
RAFAEL MALDONADO / NEWS-PRESS photos
Instrumental Music will close its Santa Barbara location in April. The store, which has walls lined with guitars and ukuleles, will hold a final sale April 10 to clear its inventory.
meeting some kids.” As a full-time staff member at the Thousand Oaks location, Mr. Pino won’t lose his job, but instead, he is saddened over the loss of opportunity for aspiring musicians in Santa Barbara. “You can be a nobody on the street, but when you come into a music store, you’re a musician, and all of a sudden, you’re somebody,” Mr. Pino said. “That type of thing is really hard to get in an online experience. So for me, I feel kind of a sense of loss for the people and the musicians in Santa Barbara because there’s a certain experience that comes with being able to come into a music shop and play and talk and really be around like-minded people.” Since announcing the decision to close the State Street store, both Mr. McCann and Mr. Pino received many messages and farewells from loyal customers. “We’ve had a tremendous Please see music on A4
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By GRAYCE MCCORMICK NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
A “For Sale” sign hangs outside of Instrumental Music on upper State Street as the company plans to consolidate its inventory into one location in Thousand Oaks.
Santa Barbara City Council members voted unanimously Tuesday to move the Westside Community Paseos Project forward, determining that bikefriendly street diverters are required for functional safety. This decision came after a lengthy discussion where the council heard why the Historic Landmarks Commission denied the project and why public works wanted it to move forward anyway. The project is intended to connect the Westside to downtown and the Eastside. The HLC denied the project — which includes traffic diverters and high-visibility bike lanes at the Sola and Santa Barbara Street intersection, along with curb extensions and landscaping — on Please see council on A4
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