NSSF Praises Preliminary Injunction Against Unsafe Handgun Act

Hornady 6.5 Creedmoor Headstamp
IMG Jim Grant

WASHINGTON, D.C. — NSSF, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, praises the U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Southern Division’s order granting a preliminary injunction for the plaintiffs blocking enforcement of California’s Unsafe Handgun Act. The case, Boland v. Bonta, was filed shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen decision. The court issued the preliminary injunction today.

“This order is a victory for lawful gun ownership in California. For too long, the Second Amendment has been significantly infringed upon by elected officials who have taken every opportunity to put roadblocks in front of law-abiding citizens seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President, and General Counsel. “The order is the first step in what will be a protracted legal battle, but it is a significant win. NSSF has long contended that California’s Unsafe Handgun Act is an unconstitutional infringement denying Californians their ability to legally purchase the handguns that would best suit their needs. The court is correctly applying the holdings of the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision that the Second Amendment is the only test when it comes to lawful firearm ownership and the holdings of Heller that firearms in common use are protected by the Second Amendment.”

Boland v. Bonta, also brought by the California Rifle & Pistol Association and Chuck Michel of Michel & Associates, challenged California’s Unsafe Handgun Act that requires all new models of pistols sold in the state to be equipped with a chamber-loaded indicator, a magazine disconnect mechanism and be capable of imparting a micro stamp from the handgun’s firing pin on the primer of an expended cartridge case. That final requirement is technologically impossible.

NSSF testified when it was debated in California’s legislature that it was impossible to meet such a requirement. The patent-holder on microstamping technology, Todd Lizotte, admitted that microstamping is unreliable, stating, “…legitimate questions exist related to both the technical aspects, production costs, and database management associated with microstamping that should be addressed before wide-scale implementation is legislatively mandated.” NSSF also provided important testimony at the hearing that the court relied upon in rendering its decision.

“The microstamping provision requires handguns to have a particular feature that is simply not commercially available or even feasible to implement on a mass scale,” the court’s order reads.

This is a fact that NSSF has long maintained, and all peer-reviewed studies have reached the same conclusion.

Microstamping can be easily defeated by dragging a nail file over the tip of a firing pin or replacing the firing pin. However, the requirement was certified by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris. Since its certification, California’s list of handguns certified for sale has dwindled. No new models have been added to California’s approved list since 2013, and models available for sale have dwindled 75 percent, from 976 handgun models to under 250 in 2022, when models with similar paint schemes are taken into consideration.


About The National Shooting Sports Foundation

NSSF is the trade association for the firearm industry. Its mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and shooting sports. Formed in 1961, NSSF has a membership of thousands of manufacturers, distributors, firearm retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen’s organizations, and publishers nationwide. For more information, visit nssf.org

National Shooting Sports Foundation

7 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Green Mtn. Boy

The NSSF is as worthless as Negotiating Rights Away,FRAC for the win when it comes to manufactures.

Norm

Some people will complain about free ice cream.

DIYinSTL

NSSF has the impossible task of trying to maintain functional and civil interaction between an industry and a hostile government agency.

Knute Knute

Note that the mission of the NSSF is NOT to maintain interaction between citizens and their hostile government. That is a job that nobody does. Because, speaking of impossible tasks… 🙂

Bigfootbob

“No new models have been added to California’s approved list since 2013, and models available for sale have dwindled 75 percent, from 976 handgun models to under 250 in 2022, when models with similar paint schemes are taken into consideration.”

Mr. Grant, I read the entire article, I don’t understand what the last ten words of your article has to do with microstamping technology. Your article did not include anything about colors on guns in California, nothing surprises me coming from KamelHO or California either though.

Tionico

One of the requirements to be listed on California’s list of “approved” handns is that it have microstamping capabilities. Since NO new handguns have this, the list of “approved” guns to be sold in California has shrunk. That stupid state considers different colour variants of the exact same model gun as “different models”. Thus the actual number of different models is much smaller as the knuckleheads in charge will consider a tan version of ZYX to be a separate model from brown one, itendica in every other respect. One thing that was NOT made crystal clear (maybe I flew past… Read more »

Knute Knute

IMO, he means that he is not counting models of handgun with different paint schemes as separate models.
Most likely he suspects that someone in favor of CA’s gun control efforts will try to count one handgun model in 50 colors as 50 different models, and would have attempted to use that fiction to discredit this whole article, if he had not used those ten words to defuse that potential attack.
Assuming that I’m correct in that assessment; GOOD JOB, Mr. Grant!