Wednesday, October 14, 2009

AB 962 - CalGuns will Challenge It in Court

One of the best web sites I know of to learn about legal issues involving gun rights is David Hardy's Of Arms And The Law. In a post about Governor Schwarzenegger's signing statement for AB 962, Bill Wiese of the CalGuns Foundation posted a statement confirming CalGuns resolve to challenge AB 962 in Federal Court. That post also outlined the legal strategy they intend to pursue.

This lawsuit will be very interesting to follow.

While AB 962 was wending its way through the California legislature, I often wondered if it could not be attacked via the Commerce clause of the United States Constitution. But in a reply to a post that brought up just that idea, Bill Wiese replies:

We'd prefer a winning strategy. Commerce clause attacks may well result in negative outcomes or way more handwaving and time up the appeals chain. Why not go direct with a clean parallel case?
I am not a lwyer, but I would have thought that a Commerce Clause strategy would be a winning strategy. Who ever heard of the FAAAA '94? I hope that this case does not lose at lower level courts so that The Volokh Conspiracy can weigh in with cogent legal analyses on the case.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The reasons the law can't be challenged under the Commerce Clause is two fold. First, similar bans on spray paint have been upheld as being part of states traditional police power. Second and more importantly, there is no commercial discrimination. In the wine cases states allowed in state wineries to ship to in state buyers while disallowing out of state wineries to ship to instate wineries. Here, all handgun ammunition vendors are barred from shipping to California buyers.

-Gene
Chairman - The Calguns Foundation

NotClauswitz said...

In a double whammy, it appears that we've got an Assemblyman from SoCal who is willing to amend his own legislation into legislation that would repeal AB962 - yay Curt Hagman!
At least I hope this doesn't screw things up by adding a confusing distraction into the mix...

Left Coast Conservative said...

Gene,

Thanks for visiting Left Coast Conservative, and for clarifying the legal reasoning.

DirtCrashr: I fear that the repeal attempt will go nowhere.