{"id":329,"date":"2018-07-12T12:07:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T12:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/2018\/07\/12\/california-sued-by-coalition-of-gun\/"},"modified":"2019-08-16T18:29:12","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T18:29:12","slug":"california-sued-by-coalition-of-gun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/?p=329","title":{"rendered":"California Sued By Coalition Of Gun Rights Groups Over AWB Registration Disasters"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&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;}]'><\/div>\n<p>\nThe Second Amendment Foundation, the Calguns Foundation, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and the Firearms Policy Foundation have come together to sue the California Department of Justice, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and the head of the California Bureau of Firearms. Their complaint, filed in Shasta County Superior Court, is a constitutional challenge to the bullet button registration system and a writ of mandamus requiring the state to allow people to register as required under state law. That last bit might sound confusing but people had until July 1st to register their bullet buttons. The only problem is that many people were not able to do so because the system crashed. It&#8217;s a damned if you do and damned if you don&#8217;t situation.<\/p>\n<p>From their joint release:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p>\n<i>The lawsuit argues that DOJ\u2019s \u201cbullet-button assault weapon\u201d registration system was defective, often \u201ccrashing\u201d completely, and the various failures prevented many gun owners from complying with the laws\u2014potentially turning people into felons overnight.<\/p>\n<p>SACRAMENTO, CA (July 11, 2018) \u2014 Today, attorneys for three gun owners and four civil rights organizations filed a new lawsuit and petition for writ of mandate that claims California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and his Department of Justice (DOJ) violated their civil rights protected under the state and federal constitutions. A copy of the complaint can be viewed or downloaded at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.firearmspolicy.org\/sharp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.firearmspolicy.org\/sharp<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit, captioned Harry Sharp, et al. v. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, et al., is supported by The Calguns Foundation (CGF), Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), and Firearms Policy Foundation (FPF). Named as defendants are California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Acting Chief of the DOJ Bureau of Firearms, Brent E. Orick, and the California Department of Justice itself. The plaintiffs are represented in the case by attorneys George M. Lee and Douglas Applegate, as well as Raymond M. DiGuiseppe, a former California deputy attorney general and prosecutor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany people, including our clients, did everything they could to comply with the law and avoid criminal liability,\u201d commented Lee. \u201cThey used updated web browsers, hardware, different devices, and even did internet speed tests to make sure it wasn\u2019t a problem on their end. <b>The DOJ\u2019s crashed system is a reflection of their cascading failures to build a system and allow people to register their guns before July 1 if that\u2019s what they wanted to do.&#8221;<\/b><\/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>Under California\u2019s voluminous gun control laws, <b>someone merely transporting an unregistered \u201cassault weapon\u201d to the shooting range<\/b> \u2013 even if one believes it was legal and registered under other DOJ systems, like DROS \u2013 <b>\u201cis guilty of a felony\u201d and possibly subject to a prison sentence of \u201cfour, six, or eight years.\u201d<\/b> Other crimes can be added on to that, including common separate charges like possession and manufacturing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAttorney General Xavier Becerra seems to care about everything but the constitution, the rule of law, and law-abiding California gun owners,\u201d said FPC President Brandon Combs. \u201cIf Becerra spent as much time doing his job as he does talking about his pet crusades against the federal government, hundreds of thousands of Californians would not be in legal jeopardy right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re suing because California DOJ\u2019s Firearms Application Reporting System (CFARS) broke down during the deadline week for people to register their firearms in accordance with new state laws,\u201d said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. <b>\u201cFor a whole week the system was largely inaccessible, so people who wanted to comply with the law simply couldn\u2019t and now they face becoming criminals because they couldn\u2019t do what the law requires.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\u201cPredictably the state of California wants to take guns away from the law abiding. In this instance they couldn\u2019t even build a working system to respect gun owners\u2019 rights,\u201d explained CGF Chairman Gene Hoffman. \u201cWe simply want to allow those who want to comply with the law to have more time with a working registration system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like a bad version of \u2018Catch-22\u2019,\u201d Gottlieb observed. \u201cThe government required registration by the deadline, but the online registration failed and people couldn\u2019t register. They\u2019re required to obey the law, but the system broke down, making it impossible to obey the law. Now these people face the possibility of being prosecuted. We simply cannot abide that kind of incompetence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce again, the DOJ and Attorney General Becerra unlawfully and unconstitutionally moved the goal posts on peaceful, law-abiding gun owners,\u201d observed FPF Vice President Jonathan Jensen. \u201cTheir failures should not result in people going to prison and losing their property.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b><\/p>\n<p>Combs noted that the case is not an endorsement of firearm registration, which carries its own risks<\/b>, as many news reports have shown.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGun owners had a right to decide how they would approach these serious legal issues,\u201d explained Combs. <b>\u201cAttorney General Becerra and his DOJ denied gun owners the opportunity to exercise their rights and make an informed choice, forcing them into the sights of fascist, hyper-aggressive special agents who kick in doors and put gun owners in jail. That\u2019s completely unacceptable and totally deplorable.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Californians who tried to register their firearms as \u201cassault weapons\u201d before July 1 but were unable to should contact the Legal Action Hotline immediately at https:\/\/www.firearmspolicy.org\/hotline 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>The Second Amendment Foundation, the Calguns Foundation, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and the Firearms Policy Foundation have come together&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":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[452,863,515,516,37,340,384,734],"class_list":["post-329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-awb","tag-bullet-buttons","tag-calguns-foundation","tag-california","tag-firearms-policy-coalition","tag-firearms-policy-foundation","tag-second-amendment-foundation","tag-sharp-et-al-v-becerra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329","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=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11513,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions\/11513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}