Second Amendment Foundation

Press release:

SAF, PARTNERS SEEK PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION IN CALIFORNIA CASE

BELLEVUE, WA – Attorneys for the Second Amendment Foundation and three other advocacy groups have filed an amended complaint against California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent enforcement of a new law restricting possession of so-called “bullet button assault weapons” because of a problem with the registration system during the week prior to the deadline.

SAF is joined in the case by the Calguns Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, Firearms Policy Foundation and seven private citizens. The motion was filed in Shasta County Superior Court where the original lawsuit was filed. The case is known as Sharp, et al v. Attorney General Xavier Becerra, et al and documents may be viewed or downloaded here.

At issue is the apparent failure of the online California Firearms Application Reporting System (CFARS) operated by the state Department of Justice during the days prior to the registration deadline. During the week of June 25-30, which was the statutory registration deadline, the CFARS system was inaccessible and inoperable on a variety of web browsers across the state.

Many users who were able to initially log in and begin the process could not finish because the system crashed, obliterating all of their work, lawsuit alleges. The CFARS system was substantially underfunded and understaffed from its inception, according to the plaintiffs, and they want to prevent enforcement of the ban against people who could not comply with the law because of the system failure.

“This unjust California government created problem must be stopped immediately,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Gun owners should not be put at risk due to state regulatory incompetence.”

“California cannot have it both ways,” noted Calguns Foundation Chairman Gene Hoffman. “If it’s going to register and ban guns it cannot, through ineptitude, also make registration an illusion and defacto confiscation.”

“This is fundamentally a simple lawsuit about a troubling issue,” added Firearms Policy Coalition President Brandon Combs. “Attorney General Becerra and his DOJ had one job to do: Provide a functional system for gun owners to use in registering their eligible firearms. But instead of doing their jobs, they created a huge new mess for law enforcement and put innocent people and lawfully-owned property at serious risk.”

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27 COMMENTS

  1. “California cannot have it both ways,” noted Calguns Foundation Chairman Gene Hoffman. “If it’s going to register and ban guns it cannot, through ineptitude, also make registration an illusion and defacto confiscation.”

    That’s a crafty feature, not a ‘bug’…

  2. Trying to use technicalities and website failure as a type of lawfare against California gun owners.
    Whole thing a scam.
    SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.
    Pretty clear.

    • Apparently, they don’t have enough criminals in California. So the government manufactures them out of law-abiding citizens. Even letting the ones already convicted out of prison and importing more from Mexico hasn’t satisfied the demand.

      • They don’t have enough criminals they can fine. Any day in court, a trucker with a mistake on his log will get fined $500 = court costs(which equals 2 1/2 times the fine roughly) or some poor shmo who lost a parking ticket and then got fined plenty, not to mention the extra it cost for his registration on his car when it was late – while others get the time served for open container, driving without a license, peeing in public, possession of small amount of drugs, etc. They pay nothing and get meals and a shower over the weekend.

  3. As usual, this is a feature not a bug. A non-functional web site combined with gun owers not informed until near the end of the registration period means formerly law abiding people become criminals who can’t legally own the weapons. Then the rifles can be confiscated.

    • Given the known details, it is increasingly difficult to characterize this any way other than what you suggest: a blatant attempt at adding as many CA gun owners as possible to the prohibited persons list.

      It requires a level of obtusity that is difficult to accept as anything other than deliberate to construe what is happening with this as a mistake or circumstance. In an honest world those responsible would face federal charges relating to attempted denial of civil rights under color of law. Given there would be millions of counts, one would expect the perpetrators to spend the rest of their lives in federal prison. Instead, they will enjoy not only the common liberty, but also special privilages accrued specifically for committing this outrage.

      Is anyone not beginning to worry that resolving these disagreements will require an eventual CW2?

      I don’t like it, I don’t want it and I sure don’t advocate it, but it seems that over any given period of time I become ever more concerned that eventually it will be the only possible remedy. Each new series of usurpations and intolerable acts, and the decided lack of legal remedies seems to make any non violent solution ever less likely.

      With the progressives convinced that any means are justified to reach their ends, conservatives will not be forever able to effectively proceed only within the law. When conservatives begin to act in the method of progressives, who will uphold the rule of law? How long will the Republic, so divided, endure?

      Meanwhile the pace and severity of the depredations only ever seems to increase.

      The Founders lived in a different world, but were presciently wise. Does anyone here think that any of them, here today, would do any less than to call for a revolution already?

      I greatly fear the progressives count on conservatives to capitulate, rather than immerse us into a civil war, especially given that such conflict likely ends with the death of the nation at the hands of some foreign enemy.

      Perhaps the turning point is the appointment of Gorsuch and likely Kavenaugh to the SC. Maybe this will provide the relief needed to prevent a civil war.

      However, the left already largely ignore the law.

      LBJ sent federal troops to Alabama to force compliance with the constitution and federal law regarding civil rights. If the high court rules, will Trump do the same to correct the situation found here in California? If not, by what mechanism will the rule of law be enforced?

      I have no answers, only grave concerns.

  4. Try living in N.Y. talk about shall not be infringed , N.Y. is a cesspool for legitimate lawfull gun owners , yet go to any gun shop & purchase an AR-15 or variant of & you will eigther end up featureless , or you will end up with a fixed 10 rd mag & I mean fixed , as in tig welded mag catch on your rifle. Kinda defeats the purpose of having an AR as it was meant to be !! MA loaders 10 rd are quick load devices but at $40 each, it is fucking redicioulous. Not to mention not being able to drop your fixed magazine for cleaning purposes. . I would like to see those California SAF partners take notice of New Yorkers plight. Bendoverandcoughomo needs to be removed from office. Allong with all the gun grabbing tyrants in N.Y. & there are plenty.

  5. A large part of the problem was the amount of information that the DOJ required applicants to submit in order to register a BB AW as a “Registered Assault Weapon ” (RAW). Way back in 2000, when the first RAW law was enacted (for fully automatic weapons then legally possessed by California residents), it was a simp0le matter of filing out a card with the make, model and serial number of the rifle. This time around, the DOJ adopted a host of regulations which made it difficult, time consuming, and in some cases nearly impossible to register a weapon.
    For example, one could only register a complete firearm; completed lowers (which are firearms under Federal law) could not be registered at all. Second, not only was the manufacturer, model and serial number required, but the date and place of purchase. (I don’t recall” was not an acceptable response, notwithstanding the fact that many of these rifles were built off of stripped lowers with various pieces bought off the internet at various points in time. Who knew then that they had to keep those records for now?
    Third, registration could be done ONLY on line. Fourth, an applicant had to submit a number of electronic photographs showing specific features of the rifle or pistol, including close ups of the receiver’s left and right sides, full length left and right and etc. So if you didn’t have an electronic camera/cellphone or a computer, you were SOL. And this is only a taste.
    Fourth, the regulations attempt to freeze your rifle in the configuration it is in s of the date it is registered. No one knows why. Well that’s not true, we know why–they hate guns.
    The requirements were so comprehensive that the DOJ had to get permission to extend the registration period by sex months because they hadn’t been able to set up the computer system to handle it. (Then again, it would seem that they never really did.) Add to that the system was badly undermanned. Even people who managed to get their filing done on time are still waiting for a review months later.

    I am so so glad that I went “featureless” and avoided the s**t show.

    • Lucky you. I do not see a featureless AR-15 or variant the same as an AR made the way it was intended. Imho they’re chipping away at our rights , till we no longer have any. That’s just wrong in so many ways.

      • Attaching a fixed stock and a muzzle break or thread protector instead of a “flash suppressor” means I can have a standard mag release and no registration. Right now I have a fin grip (which really sucks and could easily be much better designed), but I will eventually buy a Thordsen stock. The Thordsen is fixed, allows a full grip, and is quite comfortable to shoot. So I don’t think I gave up anything I cared about and got to eliminate my bullet button. The suckers (IMO) who fell for the registration trap are stuck with their bullet buttons, although the requirement in the regs makes no sense since it is a RAW anyway, a class that includes fully functional select fire rifles with standard mag releases and thirty round mags. BUT NO! said the DOJ, this new registration is for a “special class” and that the BB must be maintained.

        • You cannot make this shit up. Does anybody in the state ever even attempt to explain WHY that manner of stupidity is required? Can they point to any improvements is statistics of any kind? Do they publish cost estimates or any manner of justification? I think I’ll stay in TX and ignore any such laws until they carry me away.

        • “Does anybody in the state ever even attempt to explain WHY that manner of stupidity is required? ”

          CA gun laws are not about guns – they’re about getting re-elected by what is known as ‘virtue signaling’, showing that the politician is ‘doing something’ about ‘a problem’.

          CA DOJ seems to feel it must show more virtue than anyone.

  7. California has become an elitist state. Governor Moonbeam has wrought havoc and will now retreat to his off-grid Shangri La to end his days. It’s become a cesspool, he won’t have to deal with.

    I don’t like going back but I have family there.

    • Sometimes I wish I was an orphan. Family ties keep me stuck in Washington, which is in a dick-measuring contest with California as to who’s more “progressive.” Makes me sick, but, my daughter’s buried here, so I’m not leaving. 10-15 years from now, I’m going to be one of those sad, pathetic souls whining about how the NRA has abandoned me… Priorities, I guess…

  8. Notice: I will no longer bookmark or read TTAG. Sponsored Content is the opposite of truth. It is ridiculous to call your site The Truth About Guns while you have sponsored content. Stop spamming my eyes with this trash.

  9. Rather than file a lawsuit against the state of California for failing to provide a working registration system, why not file a lawsuit against the state of California for an UNREASONABLE SEARCH under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and NIX ALL REGISTRATION PROCESSES?

    The fact that rifles are “dangerous” is NOT justification to require registering them. Otherwise, the state must require that you register every storage container filled with gasoline as well as every box of matches and every butane lighter.

    And before anyone poo-poos the notion that gasoline, matches, and lighters are extremely dangerous and capable of causing catastrophe, please consider how a spree killer could quite literally torch a good portion of California with wildfires that they start with gasoline, matches, and/or butane lighters.

    • It was actually a Tijuana Two-step. Step one was to ban the Bullet Button for all rifles sold after January 1, 2017. Because even with a BB, reloads were too fast, so said the Legislature. Actually, the legislature specifically stated that its intent back in 2000 was to ban all AR and AK style rifles from the state in toto, but that didn’t work out because of the bullet button work-around. So they banned the Bullet Button, thinking that this wold somehow get them to their “AW” utopia (but without banning all semiauto rifles and shotguns). Step Two was to require the registration, removal from the state, or “featureless” conversion of existing rifles. (They also required the registration of all “ghost guns”) So now there are a bunch of featureless rifles put there, and more being sold every day. Since the new law was such a failure, we expect that the presumptive next governor will go full retard and ban all semiauto rifles and require the registration of all existing rifles, including Garands, M1 Carbines, and semiauto shotguns as “assault weapons.” I have a feeling though that even the legislature may balk at banning the last category, given the millions of duck hunters in this state.

      • Wasn’t the bullet button actually developed for CA? I mean, I’ve never even seen one, couldn’t understand what was being discussed for a long time. Closest I’ve been to that stupidity was a National Match M1A I bought which was a “CA gun”, which at the time only meant it could not have an evil flash suppressor. Fine, but there were no NM muzzle brakes, so after around 600 rounds of breakin and sightin (very disappointing accuracy for a NM rifle), I replaced it with a NM flash suppressor and the group size decreased by around 70%, and for the first time all ammo shot to the same zero instead of 5 or 6 inches apart from a different ammo. Why anyone in CA didn’t replace theirs as I did, I have no idea. I couldn’t tell the difference by looking at it, who would know?

        • “Why anyone in CA didn’t replace theirs as I did, I have no idea. I couldn’t tell the difference by looking at it, who would know?”

          Because adding a flash suppressor to an M1A gives it a ‘feature’, and thus ‘manufactures an assault weapon’, which is a CA felony. In CA, that’s too much risk for too little gain.

        • My M21 has the Ca. compliant brake with the holes instead of the traditional slots and it shoots fine.

  10. La Revolution she is coming, we’s got to protect the Illegals Y’all, sooner or Later the Oppressed have their day, So many illegals get paid by the state too vote Anti-America no wonder La twisted sister Left coast is perverted! MN soon to follow with a nutcase running for AG, a domestic Abuser
    Seems all Democratic controlled state’s are Anti -American

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