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Residents of California must now pay an excise tax on firearms after a law signed by California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom entered into effect on Monday.

The law imposes an 11% excise tax on the gross receipts of firearms, firearm precursors, and ammunition sold in California, then directs the revenue toward the state Gun Violence Prevention and School Safety Fund in order to bankroll “violence prevention, education, research, response, and investigation.” Newsom celebrated the law along with other gun control provisions last year, asserting that they will “make our communities and families safer.”

“While radical judges continue to strip away our ability to keep people safe, California will keep fighting because gun safety laws work,” he said. “The data proves they save lives.”

Gun sellers already pay the federal government an excise tax between 10% and 11% to fund wildlife conservation efforts. California lawmakers referenced that federal tax as justification for their new law, contending that the tax helps grant programs to “remediate the effects that firearms and ammunition have on wildlife populations through game hunting.”

Other laws passed last year in California alongside the tax provision raised the minimum age for firearm carry to twenty-one years old, as well as restricted firearm carry in “certain sensitive public places” and enacted more strict training requirements for those seeking a carry license. Another law will require all semiautomatic sidearms to microstamp expended cartridges with “unique identifiers” starting in 2028 to offer police “information to help identify suspects.”

California lawmakers have faced numerous lawsuits in recent years due to their increasingly strict gun control regime. They defended a law that bans purchasing more than one firearm within thirty days and a statute that bans nonresidents from carrying firearms.

Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization which supports increased gun control, said in an analysis that California has “the strongest gun laws in the country” and continues to “innovate with its gun safety laws,” often establishing models that other progressive states imitate.

Additional firearm measures have nevertheless been introduced in California. One new proposal would require gun owners to register their weapons and pay an annual fee in order to continue possessing them, while officials at the California Department of Justice would be allowed to impose “annual renewal fees for firearm registration” to cover program costs.