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A paper funded by The Calguns Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition examining whether Assault Weapons Bans can survive ‘rational basis’ scrutiny in the courts has been published in ConLawNOW.
The author, Clayton Cramer, is a noted historian whose work was cited in both District of Columbia vs. Heller and McDonald vs. Chicago.
Cramer concluded that “There is no way to hold that AW bans which deny a fundamental right, as Heller determined the Second Amendment to protect, survives the ‘rational basis’ standard of scrutiny.”
Legislation will pass the rational basis test, Cramer explains, if the court finds it is “rationally related to a legitimate state interest.” Because AW bans apply to a segment of firearms that are among the least criminally used, are arbitrarily applied, call for irrational punishment lengths, and target a politically unpopular class of people, they are not rationally based.
While the bans (such as California’s Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989) cite a threat to the health, safety, and security of the public as justification for their existence, the banned weapons are seldom criminally misused. In a study performed to assess the effectiveness of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, the authors had a difficult time “’discerning the effects of the ban’ at least partly because ‘the banned weapons and magazines were rarely used to commit murders in this country” before the 1994 ban.’”
AW bans focus primarily on name and model numbers rather than functional characteristics, since weapons banned are “functionally indistinguishable from sporting arms that have been used for more than a century by civilians in the U.S. with semiautomatic, detachable magazine feed." This arbitrary application of the law makes such bans vulnerable to an equal protection challenge.
Also, the lack of distinctive qualities makes it difficult to define specifically what an assault weapon is. In fact, Steve Helsley, a California DOJ official, wrote in a 1988 memo:

“Consequently, I believe that assault weapons cannot be defined in a workable way, by size, caliber, action type or magazine capacity. . . . Unless a realistic definition can be developed for ‘assault weapons,’ we should leave the issue alone.”

Cramer also found that the punishments associated with violating California’s AW ban (either the possession or the importation of an assault weapon) involve lengthier prison terms than possession of a machine gun, possession of a hand grenade, or forcible rape.
In addition, those crafting AW bans often display a “bigotry” toward gun manufacturers and owners, indicating that the pursuit of AW bans could be motivated by bias. After he signed the SAFE Act in 2013, New York Governor Cuomo essentially told the law’s opponents they weren’t welcome in his state:

“Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”

You can read the entirety of Cramer’s study here.
Please consider contributing today to further sponsor future Second Amendment-related studies.
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SAN FRANCISCO – In response to the August 15, 2016, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the consolidated cases of Peruta v. San Diego and Adam Richards, et al. v. Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto, The Calguns Foundation issued the following statement:

While the Ninth Circuit’s decision to deny reviewing its wrongly-decided opinion is disappointing, it is far from surprising.
And though the outcome of Richards v. Prieto is disappointing, CGF is absolutely committed to advancing Second Amendment rights.
The Calguns Foundation is already hard at work updating our Carry License Sunshine and Compliance Initiative research and working on pre-litigation planning.
And as part of our important ongoing program to help law-abiding Californians carry for self-defense, we are currently acquiring and reviewing the policies of all California sheriffs and major city police chiefs for unlawful or unconstitutional carry license policies to cooperatively remedy or litigate.
The Richards v. Prieto right-to-carry litigation was always about securing a meaningful and accessible way to lawfully carry handguns for self-defense in public, and The Calguns Foundation will continue doing just that in and out of the courts.

The Calguns Foundation (www.calgunsfoundation.org) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that serves its members, supporters, and the public through educational, cultural, and judicial efforts to advance Second Amendment and related civil rights.

The Calguns Foundation scored a major victory earlier this year in Teixeira v. Alameda County in which the Court held that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms extends to protect gun retailers from being shut out of an area by government zoning ordinances.
But now that ruling is at risk.
Alameda County and the State of California are petitioning the court to rehear the case.
They didn’t like the ruling of the three-judge panel, so they want even more judges to weigh in on the issue.
Under the challenged Alameda County ordinance, a new gun store must be located at least 500 feet away from any residentially zoned district, elementary, middle or high school, preschool or day care center, another firearms sales business, or places where liquor is sold or served.
But, according to a scientific study conducted by CGF and other plaintiffs, which included a geographic study of the entirety of Alameda County, there are no parcels within the county that meet the ordinance’s requirements.
Writing for the majority, Judge O’Scannlain held:

“[The] right of law-abiding citizens to keep and to bear arms is not a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees…”

“If the right of the people to keep and bear arms is to have any force, the people must have a right to acquire the very firearms they are entitled to keep and to bear. Indeed, where a right depends on subsidiary activity, it would make little sense if the right did not extend, at least partly, to such activity as well….Alameda County has offered nothing to undermine our conclusion that the right to purchase and to sell firearms is part and parcel of the historically recognized right to keep and to bear arms.” If you can’t tell already, this case is integral to our fundamental rights. We have already won once, but we need to be prepared to fight again if the court grants the wishes of Alameda County and the State.
Please make a tax-deductible donation to support Texeira v. Alameda County.
Help ensure that we have the resources to fight back against an ordinance that drove the ability to exercise gun rights out of an entire geographic area. 
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The lawsuit, which challenges special exemptions to California’s “Gun-Free School Zone Act” for retired government employees, is being appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
LOS ANGELES (August 8, 2016) – A civil rights lawsuit challenging a special, legislatively-created exemption to the “California Gun-Free School Zone Act” for retired government employees as unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause is being appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals following Central District of California Federal District Court Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell’s August 5 order granting the State of California’s motion to dismiss.
The lawsuit, filed in April by 11 individuals and 4 nonprofit civil rights organizations, argues that the state’s many special statutory exemptions to gun laws for retired “peace officers” are a violation of their Fourteenth Amendment constitutional rights.
Judge O’Connell’s August 5 order held that the plaintiffs and retied peace officers are “sufficiently similarly situated to establish an equal protection claim” under the Equal Protection Clause. But, the Court held, review of “the Retired Peace Officer Exemption does not trigger heightened Scrutiny” because the “only group the Act treats differently is retired peace officers based on their status as former law enforcements officers.”
The Court’s order said that “the government interest here is one of private protection and self-defense” for the retired government employees, and, “[t]herefore, allowing retired peace officers an exemption from the general ban of carrying concealed weapons on school property is rationally related to the legitimate state interest of ensuring their protection.”
In its conclusion, the Court found that the Plaintiffs’ claim that the Retired Peace Officer Exemption is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause cannot be cured by amendment because so long as the government has an interest in protecting retired peace officers, it will survive rational basis scrutiny.”
The Plaintiffs believe that, should the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause be so narrowly construed as to allow special exemptions like this one, millions of law-abiding people will be disenfranchised from their Second Amendment rights and continuously face political attacks with the support of government employee special interest groups like those who supported California Senate Bill 707, including the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, Fraternal Order of Police, California State Lodge, Peace Officers Research Association, Riverside Sheriffs’ Association, Sacramento County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, Santa Ana Police Officers Association, and others.
According to institutional plaintiff Firearms Policy Foundation, the lawsuit’s purpose is to strike down as unconstitutional a number of exemptions that shield retired “peace officers” from the criminal provisions of California Penal Code Section 626.9, otherwise known as the “Gun-Free School Zone Act of 1995”, because retired “peace officers” and regular law-abiding people should be treated the same under the Equal Protection Clause.
More information about Garcia v. Harris, including relevant case filings, can be viewed or downloaded on the lawsuit’s Web site at SB707lawsuit.com.

Yesterday, attorney Donald Kilmer once again represented law-abiding gun owners and The Calguns Foundation before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
This time, Kilmer argued in the federal civil rights lawsuit Haynie v. Harris, which is aimed at forcing California Attorney General Kamala Harris to clarify what constitutes a so-called “assault weapon” so that innocent people don’t continue to be falsely arrested under vague and ambiguous terms.
Plaintiffs Mark Haynie and Brendan Richards were both arrested for being in possession of an unregistered “assault weapon,” even though their rifles were not.
At the time of his arrest in 2009, Plaintiff Mark Haynie’s firearm had a “bullet button” magazine locking device and was legal to possess.
Plaintiff Brendan Richards was jailed for an extraordinary six-day period before authorities realized that his seized weapons were not banned “assault weapons.”
http://wp1.youtube.com/watch?v=1rikD_NXYg8
The case was originally dismissed by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, who held that there was no basis for either plaintiff to fear future arrest. Following that ruling, Plaintiff Richards was falsely arrested once more by a different law enforcement agency.
The underlying problem, Kilmer argued yesterday, is that Harris – the chief law enforcement officer in the State of California – and her Department of Justice have refused to promulgate any rules or guides to law enforcement on how to accurately identify an “assault weapon” since the Third Edition was published in 2001.
While there is no deadline for a decision, the Ninth Circuit usually issues its opinions in six to twelve months after oral arguments take place and the case is submitted.
Haynie v. Harris was filed in 2010.
Help us support this case and other pro-gun litigation by making a tax-deductible donation to the Calguns Foundation:
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