On Thursday, three San Diego men joined a gun-rights group to file a federal lawsuit challenging California’s assault weapon ban.
California has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, but in June U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez ruled that California’s ban on high-capacity magazines was unconstitutional. John Dillon, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, argued that if ownership of such magazines is legal, then using them should also be legal, as Herald-Mail Media reports. He stated, “This is a straightforward case to protect our clients’ constitutional rights and property. The state of California’s ban on these firearms will fail constitutional scrutiny for the same reasons that its ban on firearm magazines did.”
Attorney George M. Lee, also representing the plaintiffs, added, “The government cannot ban the constitutionally-protected firearms at issue in this case. We look forward to proving that the state’s statutes, policies, and practices at issue in this case are both unconstitutional and irrational.”
James Miller, Patrick Russ and Ryan Peterson joined the San Diego County Gun Owners Political Action Committee to state in their lawsuit that California’s use of the term “assault weapons” is “a politically-concocted pejorative term designed to suggest that there is an inherently unlawful or illegitimate basis for owning otherwise common firearms protected by the Second Amendment.” The lawsuit names state Attorney General Xavier Becerra and the head of the state Department of Justice firearms bureau, The Daily Mail reports. – READ MORE