Lockyer Sued Over Assault Gun Law

The California affiliate of the National Rifle Assn., a county prosecutor, gun dealers and a national police organization sued Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer on Tuesday, accusing him of making the state’s recently strengthened assault gun law “incomprehensible and unenforceable.”

In a Superior Court lawsuit filed in Fresno, the plaintiffs also asked that enforcement of core provisions of the state statute be suspended until definitions of what is an assault weapon are clarified for gun owners, dealers, police and prosecutors.

Violations of the new law can range from simple infractions and misdemeanors to felonies punishable by prison sentences.

Unlike other lawsuits that sought to strike down California’s assault weapons control laws, the latest challenge zeros in on administrative regulations the state Department of Justice adopted to implement and enforce the law, which took effect Jan. 1, 2000.

But the plaintiffs charge that the regulations are so confusing, ambiguous and contradictory that they undermine the ability of police and prosecutors to enforce the law and for gun owners and dealers to determine whether their firearms are legal or outlawed.

“I believe that it is a violation of due process if I file an action against anyone based on a statute that not even I or my staff understands,” said Dist. Atty. Ed Hunt of Fresno County, a World War II firearms collector and a plaintiff in the suit.

He conceded it was highly unusual for a county prosector to sue the attorney general, the state’s chief law enforcement officer, but insisted he had no personal or political reasons for doing so.

“I’m not at war with the attorney general. He’s got a terrifically difficult job. I just need some help in understanding these statutes,” Hunt said in an interview. “Without clarification, it is impossible to know what is legal and what isn’t.”

Lockyer is confident that the regulations correctly implement the law and he will vigorously defend them, said spokesman Hallye Jordan. “We find it surprising that the district attorney, who is charged with enforcing the law, is so confused, yet he never made an effort to get his questions answered” and never attended special training workshops for prosecutors, Jordan said.

Hunt said lawyers, district attorneys and their deputies ought to know the law without attending training seminars. “If you have to attend a training session in order to understand it, you know Joe Sixpack doesn’t understand it,” he said.

The 1999 law, sponsored by Sen. Don Perata (D-Alameda) and supported by law enforcement organizations, was intended to strengthen California’s first in the nation assault weapons control law of 1989, the Roberti-Roos Act, which prohibited certain semiautomatic firearms by model and manufacturer.

But some manufacturers legally got around the law by making slight modifications and cosmetic changes in the prohibited guns and then putting virtually the same models on the market.

The 1999 law was intended to prohibit this practice by outlawing guns based on “generic” characteristics, such as a “conspicuously protruding” pistol grip, limitation on the capacity of large ammunition magazines, and whether the muzzle could accept a flash suppressor.

The suit was brought by the California Rifle and Pistol Assn., the state affiliate of the NRA; former Police Chief David Sandy of Oakland; the nonprofit Law Enforcement Alliance of America, a police officer organization; the California Sporting Goods Assn., a trade group of firearms dealers, distributors and manufacturers; and Barry Bauer, a Fresno gun dealer.