{"id":277,"date":"2018-09-25T01:15:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T01:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/2018\/09\/25\/sharp-v-becerra-assault-weapon\/"},"modified":"2019-08-16T18:29:24","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T18:29:24","slug":"sharp-v-becerra-assault-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/?p=277","title":{"rendered":"Sharp V. Becerra &#8211; Assault Weapon Registration Lawsuit &#8211; Moved To Federal Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:6873,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/onlygunsandmoney.blogspot.com\\\/2018\\\/07\\\/california-sued-by-coalition-of-gun.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:6874,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.madison-society.org&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:6875,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net\\\/firearmspolicycoalition\\\/pages\\\/4636\\\/attachments\\\/original\\\/1537567240\\\/sharp-v-becerra-sac-2018-9-21.pdf?1537567240&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:6876,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.firearmspolicy.org\\\/sharp&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:6559,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.firearmspolicy.org\\\/hotline&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];<br \/>\n  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}<br \/>\n  gtag(&#8216;js&#8217;, new Date());<\/p>\n<p>  gtag(&#8216;config&#8217;, &#8216;UA-115029161-1&#8217;);<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nIn late August, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D-CA)&nbsp; moved to have the <a href=\"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.blogspot.com\/2018\/07\/california-sued-by-coalition-of-gun.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lawsuit <\/a>against him and the California DOJ over their ineptness implementing the new registration of bullet button weapons moved to Federal court. One would have thought that he&#8217;d want to keep a suit against the California Department of Justice in state court.<\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nThe case was moved to US District Court for the Eastern District of California and assigned to Judge Morrison England, Jr.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nToday, the plaintiffs which include a number of individuals and a number of civil rights organizations filed an amended complaint. Joining the plaintiffs is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.madison-society.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Madison Society Foundation<\/a>.&nbsp; The amended complaint also adds a Section 183 claim for deprivation of due process rights.<\/p>\n<p>While I might have been tempted to just say &#8220;screw it&#8221;, all the individual plaintiffs spent hours trying to comply with the law requiring registration of their firearms. Some of the plaintiffs are IT professionals and tech savvy. Nonetheless, the database system was so screwed up, most of them were not able to do so. The response of Cal DOJ was &#8220;you procrastinated, so tough&#8221;. From the <a href=\"https:\/\/d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net\/firearmspolicycoalition\/pages\/4636\/attachments\/original\/1537567240\/sharp-v-becerra-sac-2018-9-21.pdf?1537567240\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">complaint<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p>\n<i>The following Monday, July 2, 2018,<br \/>\nPlaintiff (Terry) Jahraus contacted the DOJ for assistance, but the DOJ official told him, essentially, \u201cit<br \/>\nwas [his] responsibility to comply with the law [and] that he had all year to do so.\u201d In other<br \/>\nwords, DOJ blamed him for failing to register, even though its own statutorily-mandated<br \/>\nregistration system was inaccessible and defective throughout the entire period he had attempted<br \/>\nto register it well before the deadline.<\/i> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nThe joint release of the Second Amendment Foundation, Calguns Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, Firearms Policy Foundation, and the Madison Society Foundation is below:<\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p>\n<i>SACRAMENTO, CA (September 24, 2018) \u2014 Attorneys for seven California gun owners and five advocacy organizations announced a new court filing in a now-federal constitutional rights lawsuit over the State of California\u2019s \u201cassault weapon\u201d registration debacle. The case, Sharp, et al. v. Attorney General Xavier Becerra, et al., was originally filed in the County of Shasta Superior Court. But in late August it was removed to federal district court in Sacramento at the request of Attorney General Xavier Becerra and the DOJ defendants. The new court filing is online at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.firearmspolicy.org\/sharp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.firearmspolicy.org\/sharp<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On August 24, the California Attorney General moved the case to federal court on the basis that the plaintiffs\u2019 claims present a federal constitutional question, in addition to their state-based claims. That same day, the lawsuit was assigned to District Court Judge Morrison C. England, Jr. Two years ago, Judge England issued a bench ruling to enjoin a California statute that criminalized the use of Assembly video footage in political advertisements in a case brought by Firearms Policy Coalition and its Proposition 63 ballot initiative political committee, FPC Second Amendment Defense Committee.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile it\u2019s interesting that Attorney General Becerra doesn\u2019t want his own state\u2019s courts to hear how badly he mis-administered the mandated firearm registration program, we welcome the opportunity to show Judge England how the DOJ violated the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs and others like them,\u201d said George M. Lee, lead counsel for the plaintiffs. \u201cGeneral Becerra\u2019s actions and failures affected many gun owners from San Diego to Eureka. These law-abiding gun owners tried to register their weapons as required by law but could not do so because DOJ\u2019s registration system was wholly inadequate to do the job. We are simply asking that those injuries be reasonably remedied so that those citizens are not subject to criminal liability for possessing illegal, unregistered weapons \u2013 solely as a result of DOJ\u2019s failures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the latest complaint, submitted last Friday, the plaintiffs added a claim for deprivation of their due process rights under Title 42, Section 1983 of the United States Code. The complaint also adds as an institutional plaintiff the Madison Society Foundation, a nonprofit organization that fights to protect the right to keep and bear arms.<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs say that Becerra and the DOJ had a legal and constitutional duty to provide a functional registration system during the registration period, but that they were unable to exercise their own rights and legal duties \u201cdue to the Defendants\u2019 actions and failures, including but not limited to the inaccessibility, defects, and\/or non-functionality of the DOJ\u2019s CFARS-based registration system.\u201d The plaintiffs alleged that the DOJ\u2019s \u2018botched\u2019 \u201cassault weapon\u201d registration scheme \u2013 including the error-prone Internet application for registration that often crashed completely \u2013 violated both the U.S. Constitution and California Constitution\u2019s guarantees of due process. They also allege that the failed DOJ system violated the plaintiffs\u2019 and other similar gun owners\u2019 statutory rights.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven though the lawsuit is now in a federal district court, it\u2019s still just a straight-forward case about how Attorney General Becerra and his DOJ didn\u2019t do the job they were mandated to do,\u201d explained Firearms Policy Coalition President Brandon Combs. \u201cTheir actions and failures violated the rights of thousands of California gun owners. It\u2019s just that simple.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Under California\u2019s voluminous gun control laws, someone merely transporting an unregistered \u201cassault weapon\u201d to the shooting range \u2013 even if one believes it was legal and registered under other DOJ systems, like DROS \u2013 \u201cis guilty of a felony\u201d and potentially subject to a prison sentence of \u201cfour, six, or eight years.\u201d Other crimes can be added on to that, including common separate charges like possession and manufacturing.<\/p>\n<p>The complaint says the plaintiffs \u201cseek an un-extraordinary result, compelled by the basic tenets of due process: That they simply be allowed to register their eligible firearms and comply with the law, and that the Attorney General, the DOJ, and their officers and agents similarly comply with the law by allowing such registrations and ensuring they are properly and timely processed through a functioning online database as they have been required by statute to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis unjust California government-created problem must be stopped immediately,\u201d Second Amendment Foundation Founder and Executive Vice President, Alan Gottlieb, said in a previous statement. \u201cGun owners should not be put at risk due to state regulatory incompetence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs said that they would soon be asking Judge England for a preliminary injunction to protect affected gun owners\u2019 rights and property while the case goes forward to summary judgement or trial.<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys George M. Lee and Douglas Applegate of San Francisco-based Seiler Epstein Ziegler &amp; Applegate LLP, as well as Raymond M. DiGuiseppe, a former California deputy attorney general and prosecutor. Attorneys Bradley Benbrook and Stephen Duvernay of the Sacramento-based Benbrook Law Group, who earlier this month secured a major First Amendment victory in a case that challenged a different California gun control statute that banned truthful, non-misleading speech about handguns, have been added to the legal team.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit is backed by The Calguns Foundation (CGF), Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), Firearms Policy Foundation (FPF), and Madison Society Foundation (MSF), also institutional plaintiffs in the case.<\/p>\n<p>Californians who tried to register their firearms as \u201cassault weapons\u201d before July 1 but were unable to, or who suffered a privacy breach at DOJ, should contact the organizations\u2019 Legal Action Hotline immediately at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.firearmspolicy.org\/hotline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.firearmspolicy.org\/hotline<\/a> or by telephone at 855-252-4510<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag(&#8216;js&#8217;, new Date()); gtag(&#8216;config&#8217;, &#8216;UA-115029161-1&#8217;); In late August, California Attorney General Xavier&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[312,515,516,37,340,518,384,734],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-assault-weapons-ban","tag-calguns-foundation","tag-california","tag-firearms-policy-coalition","tag-firearms-policy-foundation","tag-madison-society-foundation","tag-second-amendment-foundation","tag-sharp-et-al-v-becerra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11575,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/11575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}