Federal Judge Blocks California Handgun (Purchase) Restrictions

[John Stark]

Federal Judge Blocks California Handgun Restrictions

California can’t ban residents from buying modern handguns.

thereload.com

The gist here is that a District judge in Commiefornia has blocked the State from restricting the kinds of handguns that people can buy:

California passed the Unsafe Handgun Act (UHA) in 2001. It initially barred the sale of any new pistol models that didn’t include a loaded chamber indicator or magazine disconnect safety. However, in 2013 the state expanded the requirements to include so-called microstamping technology. In theory, microstamping would enable a gun to leave identifiable marks on every spent casing with the goal of helping police solve crimes. However, there has never been a production gun in the world that has implemented the theoretical technology.

The practical effect of adding the requirement, which a handful of other states are now considering implementing as well, was a complete ban on the sale of all handgun models created after 2013. Outside of police officers, who are not subject to the handgun roster restrictions despite California deeming guns outside of it “unsafe,” Californians have been mostly limited to buying pistols first introduced to the market more than 15 years ago.

I'm just about sure this will be appealed, but in light of Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, this ruliling is right on the money.

Further, it backs up my view that "in common use" has nothing to do with "how many of these Arms are in circulation" as a rubric on whether certain Arms are protected by the Second Amendment, and everything to do with the notion of "safe, rigorously tested technologies" that keep Arms from being "dangerous and unusual."

In other words, Arms "in common use" amounts to "tried and true technology" that functions as intended and does not blow up in your hands because of a flawed design:

“Californians have the constitutional right to acquire and use state-of-the-art handguns to protect themselves,” Judge Carney wrote in his preliminary injunction for Boland v. Bonta. “They should not be forced to settle for decade-old models of handguns to ensure that they remain safe inside or outside the home.”

The judge here is talking about the Right "to acquire state-of-the-art handguns." He's NOT saying Californians have a Right to these banned handguns because "there are millions of them legally owned in other states." No, he's saying that Californians have the Right to parity in technological advancement.

Put another way, its not legally correct for Commifornia to limit its citizens to older Arms technology:

“These regulations are having a devastating impact on Californians’ ability to acquire and use new, state-of-the-art handguns,” Judge Cormac wrote. “Since 2007, when the [loaded chamber indicator] and [magazine disconnect safety] requirements were introduced, very few new handguns have been introduced for sale in California with those features. Since 2013, when the microstamping requirement was introduced, not a single new semiautomatic handgun has been approved for sale in California.”

California argued its law had several historical analogues implementing gun restrictions aimed at preventing accidents or tracking firearms that date back to the founding era. The first was “proving” laws that required inspectors to verify, or “prove,” that barrels were adequately constructed.

Judge Cormac was unconvinced by the examples California cited. He said proving laws were meant to ensure a gun operated as advertised...

Notice too the declaratory added by the judge about remaining "safe inside and outside the home," clearly upholding the Right to Keep, along with the Right to Bear, for self-defense purposes both on your own property and while in public:

“The Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms for self defense,” Judge Cormac said. “That right is so fundamental that to regulate conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text, the government must show more than that the regulation promotes an important interest like reducing accidental discharges or solving crime. Rather, to be constitutional, regulations of Second Amendment rights must be ‘consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.'”

The merits of this case should be copied and aped in every state that limits the technologies available under the RKBA . It not only reinforces the nearly-unlimited Right to Self Defense, its makes an extremely point about the RKBA:

That we are no more limited in our Right to Arms in terms of technology than we are in our Right to a free press, even if we no longer use printing presses for our written speech, relying instead on "state of the art" computers, ought to be obvious.

Even to the likes of "let's go back to muskets" Whorechul.

 

[Acer-m14]

Even to the likes of "let's go back to muskets" Whorechul.