Attacks on buildings and structures in California

The Grover Cleveland Elementary School shooting took place on January 29, 1979, at a public elementary school in San Diego, California, United States. The principal and a custodian were killed; eight children and police officer Robert Robb were injured. A 16-year-old girl, Brenda Spencer, who lived in a house across the street from the school, was convicted of the shootings. Charged as an adult, she pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon, and was given an indefinite sentence. As of September 2020, she remains in prison.

The Goleta postal facility shootings were a spree killing perpetrated by Jennifer San Marco on January 30, 2006. San Marco, a former US Postal Service employee, shot and killed seven people in Goleta, California before taking her own life.

Charles Andrew Williams Jr. (born February 8, 1986) is a convicted murderer who, as a 15-year-old, perpetrated the shooting at Santana High School on March 5, 2001. In the shooting, two students were killed and 13 others were wounded. Williams is currently serving 50 years to life in prison.

Richard Wade Farley (born July 25, 1948) is an American convicted mass murderer. A former employee of ESL Incorporated in Sunnyvale, California, he stalked his co-worker Laura Black for four years beginning in 1984. Black obtained a temporary restraining order against him on February 2, 1988, with a court date set for February 17, 1988 to make the order permanent.

On May 26, 2021, a mass shooting occurred at a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) rail yard in San Jose, California. Ten people were killed during the shooting, including the gunman, identified as 57-year-old VTA employee Samuel James Cassidy, who committed suicide. It is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the San Francisco Bay Area.

On November 14, 2019, at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, United States, a school shooting occurred when a student with a pistol, identified as 16-year-old Nathaniel Berhow, shot five schoolmates, killing two, before killing himself.

On December 2, 2015, a terrorist attack, consisting of a mass shooting and an attempted bombing, occurred at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, United States. The perpetrators, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple living in the city of Redlands, targeted a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event and Christmas party of about 80 employees in a rented banquet room. Fourteen people were killed and 22 others were seriously injured. Farook was a Muslim and an American born citizen of Pakistani descent, who worked as a health department employee. Malik was a Muslim and Pakistani-born green card holder. After the shooting, the couple fled in a rented Ford Expedition SUV. Four hours later, police pursued their vehicle and killed them in a shootout, which also left two officers injured.

The Lindhurst High School shooting was a school shooting and subsequent siege that occurred on May 1, 1992, at Lindhurst High School in Olivehurst, California, United States. The gunman, 20-year-old Eric Houston, was a former student at Lindhurst High School. Houston killed three students and one teacher and wounded nine students and a teacher before surrendering to police. Houston was sentenced to death for the murders, and he is currently on California's death row in San Quentin State Prison.

On February 16, 1970, a pipe bomb filled with shrapnel detonated on the ledge of a window at the San Francisco Police Department's Upper Haight Park substation. Brian V. McDonnell, a police sergeant, was fatally wounded in its blast. Robert Fogarty, another policeman, was severely wounded in his face and legs and was partially blinded. In addition, eight other policemen were wounded. The perpetrators were never caught.The prime suspect is Bernadine Dohrn of the Weather Underground. In 2009 District Attorney Kamala Harris and San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong enforced a “Gag” Order on the open investigation. The “Gag” Order request came from President Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department, not to Cooperate.

The 101 California Street shooting was a mass shooting on July 1, 1993, in San Francisco, California, United States. The killings sparked a number of legal and legislative actions that were precursors to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, H.R. 3355, 103rd Congress. The Act took effect in 1994 and expired in September 2004 after the expiration of a sunset provision. At the time, the incident was the deadliest mass shooting in the Bay Area's history, being surpassed 28 years later by the 2021 San Jose shooting.