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On Friday President Barack Obama moved to set aside Berryessa Snow Mountain as a national monument. The decision will preserve a wilderness area of more than 330,000 acres covering parts of Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Yolo, Glenn and Colusa Counties.

The decision was applauded by environmental groups, as well as an alliance of politicians and business leaders and community members throughout Northern California who had been pressing for the designation.

It's too early to say how soon the region might feel the effects of the newly created Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, federal official's say. Friday's declaration of the monument status begins a long process of creating a new management plan for the federal lands included it its boundaries.

"You're talking about 330,000 acres," Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Martha Maciel said on Friday. "You're dealing with multiple jurisdictions, multiple cities, multiple counties. You're dealing with two federal agencies, tribal interests."

A choice chunk of Northern California's backcountry is getting the federal attention it needs with President Obama's decision to give enhanced protections for 331,000 acres across five near-Bay Area counties.

Three Democratic legislators proposed a bill Thursday that would tighten control over firearm sales to keep guns away from the mentally unstable.

Rep. Mike Thompson, chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., introduced the Safer Communities Act of 2015, which "prohibits the purchase or possession of a firearm by individuals subject to involuntary outpatient commitment" if the courts deem them to "pose a danger to themselves or others."

Tourists and nature lovers in California will see more than 330,000 acres set aside for a new monument at Berryessa Snow Mountain.

The area is one of three planned national monuments announced Friday by the White House that together will add protection for mammoth bones, prehistoric rock carvings and more than a million acres of wilderness in northern California, Nevada and Texas.

Relatives and friends of the victims of last month's shooting in a Charleston, South Carolina church traveled to Washington on Wednesday to demand that US lawmakers vote on legislation to expand background checks on gun sales.

But their chances of success are at best considered slim. Similar legislation failed a Senate vote two years ago after 20 children were shot to death in the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut.