Gun Owners of California Slams Attorney General’s Justification for Ammo Registration Laws

AND WE NEED YOUR HELP!

GOC’s legal team submitted an amicus (friend of the court) brief on Friday, August 7, in support of the case filed by gold medal Olympian Kim Rhode on the law requiring background checks and fees when exercising the right to purchase ammunition. The case, Rhode v. Becerra is currently before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Once the Department of Justice officially launched ammo registration on July 1, 2019, GOC has been flooded with nightmare stories from throughout the state. Tens of thousands of erroneous denials have been reported yet the Department of Justice has repeatedly bragged how many criminals they have nabbed in the process – a minuscule number in the face of hundreds of thousands of applications. This is a discriminatory and unconstitutional action and GOC stands ready to challenge the validity of the law.

KEY POINTS IN OUR AMICUS BRIEF:

• The California Attorney General boasts that he stopped more than 750 “prohibited persons” in the first seven months, but this ignores that over 100,000 legitimate transactions by lawful individuals were prohibited from purchasing ammunition. The impact on the rights of the non-prohibited class is made worse when the 0.12% of transactions attempted by persons that the Department deemed to be statutorily “prohibited persons” are based on information that is admittedly flawed, outdated, inaccurate.
• The AG also asserts that “[t]he new laws work” but this hinges on the old laws (which seemingly still allowed prohibited persons to obtain firearms thereby requiring an alleged need for the new laws) to implement a redundant background check on transferring ammunition.
• The number of constitutional violations is so egregious, that suspending enforcement of this law while the finer points are fleshed out during trial is well within the discretion of the district court. 

GOC has been dubbed a “friend of the court wrangler” because we have assembled crucial voices – many of whom lack the financial resources to contest a law in the courts – to join our legal efforts.

WILL YOU JOIN US IN FUNDING THIS CRITICAL ACTION?

We need to put a legal dagger into the heart of the anti-gun movement – and overturning the ammo registration law is one of the most significant tools we have at our disposal.