Registering Guns After Deadline Is Illegal, Judge Rules

In a ruling that puts thousands of gun owners in violation of California’s assault weapons ban, a Superior Court judge in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, the Republican candidate for governor, has been violating state law by registering thousands of assault weapons after a legislatively imposed 1992 deadline.

The ruling, issued in response to a suit by Handgun Control, an organization co-chaired by Sarah Brady, says that the registration of all assault weapons after March 30, 1992, was illegal.

Lungren’s “continued registration permits illegal assault weapons to remain in the state, posing a significant risk to the safety and welfare of the public contrary to the expressed intent of the Legislature,” Judge Raymond Williamson said.

Lungren registered 16,084 weapons belonging to more than 11,000 people after the deadline. Although some of those people may have submitted their guns for registration a few days before the deadline, they still could be in legal jeopardy if Lungren did not process them until after the deadline, said Cameron Baker, one of the lawyers who filed the suit.

Rob Stutzman, Lungren’s spokesman, said the attorney general “disagrees with the ruling” by Williamson, but he will immediately stop registering guns.

Lungren will also ask Williamson for a stay of the order to allow time to file an appeal. Stutzman said gun owners have no immediate cause for alarm pending outcome of the appeal.

Asked whether gun owners could eventually be required to surrender their weapons, Stutzman said, “They should just wait until they hear from us.”

“We still have to determine what the corrective action is,” he said.

Steve Helsley, lobbyist for the National Rifle Assn. in California, said the ruling means people will eventually lose their right to own a gun.

“This will lead to confiscation, to the police coming to your door and taking your guns,” Helsley said.

The ruling, coming as Lungren and his Democratic opponent Gray Davis gear up for the November election, could put the attorney general on the defensive in the gun control debate during the campaign. With polls showing that regulation of assault weapons enjoys much popular support, it renews questions about Lungren’s efforts to stop the flow of such guns.

Democratic Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who is making gun control an issue in his campaign for governor against Republican Lungren, said the ruling illustrated his rival’s attitude toward law enforcement.

“Be it tobacco or assault weapons, Dan Lungren’s selective enforcement of California’s laws places people in harm’s way,” said Davis spokesman Michael Bustamante.

Officials of Handgun Control, which filed the suit in December 1997 in response to a Times series in August, said the ruling confirms their allegation that Lungren has “acted in flagrant disregard of the assault weapon statute.”

“Instead of enforcing the ban on assault weapons, Atty. Gen. Lungren has . . . encouraged illegal, underground trafficking in AK-47s and other deadly weapons,” said Luis Tolley, western director of Handgun Control.

“The purpose of the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act was to freeze the number of assault weapons available in California and thus prevent people from buying them in other states and bringing them into California,” Tolley said.

Stutzman challenged Tolley to show proof that people are bringing illegal weapons into California and registering them.

Calling Tolley’s comments “outrageous and inflammatory,” Stutzman said: “If he has evidence, he should turn it over so we can prosecute those people.”

The assault weapon control law, passed in 1989, outlawed dozens of specific types of guns, gave Lungren a way to add new weapons to the banned list and set a deadline for gun owners to register any weapon they purchased before the law was passed.

That deadline is the issue in the suit. The initial deadline was in January 1991, but the Legislature, at Lungren’s urging, extended it to March 30, 1992. Lungren spent $300,000 in 1992 on a public information campaign warning gun owners that they had to register their guns by that date or that they would be illegal. The penalty for violating the law is a $500 fine and up to one year in prison.

But when that deadline passed, Lungren continued to let gun owners register their weapons.

When The Times series revealed that practice, Lungren argued that the Legislature never intended for the deadline to be firm. He based that assertion on a provision that allows gun owners who have been arrested for illegally possessing an assault weapon to receive a reduced punishment if they register their guns.

He also argued that an appeals court ruling in 1995 did not prohibit the reduction of the punishment if a defendant registers the weapon.

Williamson’s ruling rejected both arguments.

Williamson said the appellate court did not analyze whether the attorney general had the power to continue registering weapons after the deadline. The appellate ruling dealt with a dispute over whether a man had actually registered his gun before the deadline.

He also said the provision allowing defendants to receive a reduced punishment by registering their weapons only applied to the period prior to the deadline.

A state appeals court ruled in March that the add-on provision of the assault weapons law was invalid and the entire law may be unconstitutional. The state Supreme Court has agreed to review that decision, leaving the law in effect. A bill to redraft the law and address the problems cited by the appeals court is pending in the Legislature.