SAF Sues
California DOJ Over Assault Weapon Registration Disaster
Ammoland Inc.
Posted on July 12, 2018 by Ammoland
BELLEVUE, WA –-(Ammoland.com)-
The Second Amendment Foundation yesterday filed suit against the California
Department of Justice and Attorney General Xavier Becerra, seeking an
injunction against the agency for failing and refusing to establish a properly
functioning Internet-based firearms registration system.
Joining SAF in this legal action are the Calguns
Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, Firearms Policy Foundation and three
private citizens. The lawsuit was filed in Shasta County Superior Court.
“We’re suing because California DOJ’s Firearms
Application Reporting System (CFARS) broke down during the deadline week for
people to register their firearms in accordance with new state laws,” said SAF
founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “For a whole week, the
system was largely inaccessible. People who wanted to comply with the law
simply couldn’t and now they face becoming criminals because they couldn’t do
what the law requires.”
The lawsuit notes that during the week of June 25-30,
which was the statutory registration deadline, the CFARS system was
inaccessible and inoperable on a variety of web browsers across the state. Many
users who were able to initially login and begin the process could not finish
because the system crashed, obliterating all of their work. The CFARS system
was substantially underfunded and understaffed from its inception, Gottlieb
noted.
“It’s like a bad version of ‘Catch-22’,” Gottlieb
observed. “The government required registration by the deadline, but the online
registration failed and people couldn’t register. They’re required to obey the
law, but the system broke down, making it impossible to obey the law. Now,
these people face the possibility of being prosecuted. We simply cannot abide
that kind of incompetence.”
“Attorney General Xavier Becerra seems to care about
everything but the constitution, the rule of law, and law-abiding California
gun owners,” said FPC President Brandon Combs. “If Becerra spent as much time
doing his job as he does talking about his pet crusades against the federal
government, hundreds of thousands of Californians would not be in legal
jeopardy right now.”
“Predictably the state of California wants to take guns
away from the law-abiding. In this instance they couldn’t even build a working
system to respect gun owners’ rights,” explained CGF Chairman Gene Hoffman. “We
simply want to allow those who want to comply with the law to have more time
with a working registration system.”
SAF and its partners want the court to prevent DOJ
from enforcing the law to allow individual plaintiffs and other citizens in the
same situation to register their legally-possessed firearms through a “reliable
and functional registration system.”
The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the
nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and
legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to
privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown
to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed
to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
-END-
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