CGF Lawyers Use California’s New Gun Control Laws Against the State of California in Argument to Strike Down ‘Waiting Period Laws’

In a recent letter to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, attorneys for plaintiffs Jeffrey Silvester, Brandon Combs, The Calguns Foundation, and the Second Amendment Foundation argue that a new gun control law passed this year undermines the State’s defense of the ‘waiting period laws’ struck down by federal District Court Judge Anthony Ishii following a 3-day bench trial.
Silvester v. Harris, a federal Second Amendment challenge to California’s 10-day waiting period, is pending a decision by the three-judge Ninth Circuit panel that heard oral arguments in the case in February.
Earlier this year, California Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1235, authored by Kevin de León, which (in part) requires that the Department of Justice implement an ‘instant’ point-of-sale background check process for ammunition purchases that relies on the State’s “Automated Firearms System” firearm and gun owner registry as well as its database of known armed and prohibited persons, also known as “APPS”.
By utilizing this method, SB 1235 says it will “ensure that only law-abiding, responsible Californians who appear in the Automated Firearms System are able to purchase ammunition for their legally owned firearms while violent felons and the dangerously mentally ill who appear in the Armed Prohibited Persons System are not.”
Unfortunately for Kamala Harris, those legislative findings don’t square with her arguments in Silvester.
In our 10-day waiting period case, the State has repeatedly argued that its systems are so unreliable and deficient that they still need a full 10-day waiting period for individuals who have a CCW issued by a sheriff or police chief, a Certificate of Eligibility issued by the Department of Justice, and those who already have firearms registered to them and are not prohibited persons.
At trial, we proved them wrong.
And if the background check system mandated by SB 1235 – which is, in essence, the same system the District Court ordered the DOJ to implement for known gun owners – is good enough to keep ammunition out of the hands of “violent felons and the dangerously mentally ill,” why wouldn’t it work for guns, too?
The answer is: It would.
You can read our letter to the Ninth Circuit here.
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