Lawsuit Challenging California “Assault Weapon” Ban Moves Forward

Delaware Assault Weapons Ban
California Assault Weapons Ban

U.S.A.-(AmmoLand.com)- Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced that Southern District of California Federal District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez has issued an order denying the State of California’s partial motion to dismiss in the case of Miller, et al. v. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, et al., an FPC-led federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of California’s “assault weapons” ban on common semi-automatic firearms. The Court’s order is available online at AssaultWeaponLawsuit.com.

The order, filed today, states that, regarding the issue of standing, the “Court finds Plaintiffs have standing on all claims in large part flowing from the criminal penalties they could face.” Explaining that California’s Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989 “imposes a felony criminal penalty for anyone who manufactures, distributes, imports, keeps for sale, offers for sale, or lends an ‘assault weapon’,” with “prescribed prison sentences [of] four, six, or eight years,” the Court’s order said that the “result is that any law-abiding citizen may lose his liberty, and (not ironically) his Second Amendment rights, as a result of exercising his constitutional right to keep and bear arms if the arm falls within the complicated legal definition of an ‘assault weapon.’” It went on, “If ever the existence of a state statute had a chilling effect on the exercise of a constitutional right, this is it.”

Thus, the Court held, “It has long been the case that a plaintiff possesses Article III standing to bring a pre-enforcement challenge to a state statute which regulates the exercise of a federal constitutional right and threatens a criminal penalty.” And while the “Defendants argue that Plaintiffs lack standing to challenge seven particular statutes among all of the various interlocking statutes affecting the regulation of guns deemed assault weapons,” the Court “finds to the contrary, that at least one and perhaps all of the Plaintiffs have Article III standing to challenge each of the statutes — whether singly or as an entire regulatory scheme. To sum up, the Court finds that the individual Plaintiffs and the organizational Plaintiffs have standing to challenge the nuisance statute along with the rest of the statutory scheme which defines, identifies and restricts ‘assault weapons’ which are alleged to be protected by the Second Amendment for possession and use by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Accordingly, the case will proceed.

Already pending before the Court is the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction, filed last December. That motion was originally set for a March hearing, but circumstances surrounding COVID-19 delayed the hearing. According to that motion, the plaintiffs are seeking a “preliminary injunction” and “an order enjoining Defendants Attorney General Xavier Becerra and his agent, servants, employees, and those working in active concert with him, from enforcing or giving effect to California Penal Code sections 30515 (a) and (b), 30600, 30605, 30800, 30910, 30915, 30925, 30945, 30950, 31000, and 31005, as well as Title 11, California Code of Regulations section 5460 and 5471 during the pendency of this action.” The Court was subsequently informed that the plaintiffs will also seek relief against the newest expansion of the State’s “assault weapon” ban, enacted in Senate Bill 118 passed and signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, a radical anti-Constitutionalist, this year.

“We are delighted with Judge Benitez’s order denying the State’s motion to dismiss and look forward to moving on to litigating our pending preliminary injunction motion,” said Adam Kraut, FPC’s Director of Legal Strategy. “As the order points out, the criminal penalties associated with a violation of the challenged laws can result in imprisonment and the loss of one’s ability to exercise their fundamental, individual Second Amendment rights. That’s why this case is so important to ensuring that people will no longer face those criminal penalties for responsibly exercising their rights.”

“Today’s order means that this important lawsuit will move forward as quickly as possible,” explained FPC President Brandon Combs. “Under the Supreme Court’s Heller, McDonald, and Caetano decisions, the plaintiffs and all law-abiding People have a right to keep and bear these common semi-automatic arms for all lawful purposes. We will continue to work through this case and others to restore the full scope of Second Amendment rights in California and throughout the United States.”


About Firearms Policy CoalitionFirearms Policy Coalition

Firearms Policy Coalition (www.firearmspolicy.org) is a 501(c)4 grassroots nonprofit organization. FPC’s mission is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States—especially the fundamental, individual Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms—advance individual liberty, and restore freedom.

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Rock

Even lower, more like cockroach SHIT…

Big George

Rock, now you’re giving shit a bad name!<LOL>

uncommon sense

“We have the 2A so we can SUE the government to defend our rights!” – Fudds

Rock

I believe Antifa/BLM is purposely starting the fires to spread the socialist disease nation wide. As Kalifonia burns the liberals spread like roaches and infest non libtard areas, destroying them.

Circle8

We must defeat the communist government in Khalifornia run by PIG-LOSI and her COMMUNIST NEPHEW NEW-SCUM.

MP71

In the eyes of the benevolent and all knowing Kommiefornia government, AR’s have been “assault weapons” since 1989.

Kommiefornia:leading the nation in stupidity for 30 plus years.

TStheDeplorable

The tea leaves indicate that President Trump will be nominating Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court later this week. She is a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia and he referred to her as his favorite clerk. She remains a law professor at Notre Dame Law School. President Trump appointed her to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, where she wrote one opinion (in dissent) on the Second Amendment, but it makes it clear that she is an excellent choice for the court. In the 7th Circuit case, Kanter v. Barr, Mr. Kanter had a conviction for mail fraud… Read more »

uncommon sense

Scalia was NOT the constitutionalist everyone likes to pretend he was. He’s the clown who said, in ‘Heller’ that the “second amendment is not absolute” and that reasonable infringements are okay.

Really? “Shall not be infringed” didn’t sound absolute to him? He must have a leftist secret decoder ring that shows the invisible text of the 2A containing exception clauses.
Fake-originalist propped the door wide open for infringements. Anyone “in the mold of Scalia” is not a constitutional originalist.

TStheDeplorable

The founders … also known as the original originalists … allowed restrictions on bearing arms such as not allowing mentally ill people to have them, and not allowing them in some government buildings. Certainly you don’t believe the 2nd Amendment allows second graders to pack a gun a school, right? And you’d be reasonable not to think that because nothing we have from the days of the founders indicates that they thought they were writing an amendment to achieve that. I hate to use tired arguments from the left, but your absolutist position really does have to answer the question:… Read more »

Tionico

in earlier times, children as young as today’s second graders did indeed have access to, and regularly used, firearms. They also tended horses, fires, built things, etc. I know this from conversations with my Dad, who served in the Second German War.. mid-twentieth century. Kids grew up handling firearms at home, at school, and on the way between. And NONE OF THEM ever got shot. Nor did any of them ever shooot anyone else in a criminal or careless manner. His third grade littls sister made a lot of the boys mad, becuase in their shooting contests at lunch (yes,… Read more »

Arny

Go ahead I won’t stop ya. lol

Don

Please, it is Oregon.

Superman

‘Newsom’, not ‘Newsome’.

Relic

Who cares the commies name.

Tionico

I prefer to spell it “NUISANCE”.

Big George

Actually, it’s NEW-SCUM’!!!