A lawsuit has now been filed by several gun rights proponents against California’s unconstitutional regulations of semi-automatic rifles, which they erroneously call “assault rifles.”

At the end of November, several guns rights proponents and organizations filed a complaint against the State of California for openly violating the right to keep and bear arms and for making criminal that which was previously lawful.

Four gun owners: George Holt, Irvin Hoff, Michael Louie, and Rick Russel, along with four gun rights groups: the Firearms Policy Coalition, Firearms Policy Foundation, The Calguns Foundation, and Second Amendment Foundation filed a complaint on November 30, 2017.

“By making and enforcing unlawful rules, and going around the rules to do it, the DOJ is putting tens if not hundreds of thousands of law-abiding people at risk of serious criminal liability,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney, George M. Lee, in a statement. “This case seeks to make the DOJ follow the same laws they impose on others and protect law-abiding gun owners in the process.”

That complaint was joined by a National Guard soldier, Sgt. Craig Stevens, on December 29, 2017.

Sgt. Stevens, who owns a homemade rifle that now requires a serial number under the new pretended law in California, is serving his country overseas, but in the eyes of California, he is a criminal because though he attempted to deal with the serial number issue before he was deployed, California told him they were not issuing serial numbers at that time.

Among the attacks by California against their citizens is a labeling of any gun that has a “bullet button” as an “assault weapon.”

Now, for a better understanding of what a bullet button actually is, GunsInTheNews.com reported in January 2017:

In 1989, California banned so-called “assault rifles.” The list of characteristics they used to define what qualified as a banned “assault weapon” is too complex and confusing to wade into here, but one key feature verboten by the law was the ability to accept a detachable magazine.

Creative manufacturers found ways to both comply with the laws and preserve as much functionality as possible in firearms, and one of these was the so-called “bullet button.” A “bullet button” replaces the standard push-button magazine release used on AR-15 rifles with a fixed lug containing a small button which is too small to be pressed by a finger, but operable if pressed with the bullet of a loaded cartridge. Since the law stipulated that detachable magazines were banned unless their removal required tools, and since the California DOJ defined a loaded cartridge in this case as a “tool,” the so-called “bullet button” allowed users to lawfully detach and replace magazines, so long as they obeyed California’s 10-round-capacity magazine limit and myriad other restrictions.

But last year, in a case of legislative “Whack-A-Mole,” California banned firearms containing the “bullet button” modification unless owners register them with the state by Dec. 31, 2017. (Buyer beware, however: California has a history of promising, “You can keep your gun if you register it”—and then turning around, expanding its bans, and using those registration lists to dispossess owners of guns.)

Worse, the regulations that the DOJ snuck in to implement this law on the eve of New Year’s Eve would drop the hammer on California gun owners with a wide variety of new restrictions.

Included within the DOJ’s list of regulations are over 40 new definitions; requirements that gun owners provide extensive and excessive personal information with their registrations, along with four clear digital photos of their guns; requirements for serializing firearms built from so-called “80 percent receivers”; expansion of the banned “assault weapon” definition to include “bullet-button”-equipped shotguns; restrictions on removing the “bullet button” after the firearm is registered as an “assault weapon”; and more.

So, the bullet button actually slows down the process of changing magazines.  It does not make a semi-automatic rifle an “assault rifle.”   On the contrary, it makes it aggravating.

The Attorney General’s website has an ominous clock counting down the days to comply with the tyrannical beast and states:

Pursuant to Assembly Bill 1135 (Stats. 2016, ch. 40) and Senate Bill 880 (Stats. 2016, ch. 48) effective January 1, 2017, the definition of assault weapon is revised.

These bills require that any person who, from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2016, inclusive, lawfully possessed an assault weapon that does not have a fixed magazine, as defined in Penal Code section 30515, including those weapons with an ammunition feeding device that can be readily removed from the firearm with the use of a tool, shall register the firearm before January 1, 2018, but not before the effective date of the regulations adopted by the DOJ.

UPDATE AS OF

Thu Jan 04 2018 16:28:16 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

: The ability to register an Assault Weapon pursuant to Assembly Bill 1135 and Senate Bill 880, is now available. Additionally, pursuant to Assembly Bill 103 (Stats. 2017. Ch. 17), the assault weapon registration deadline has been extended through June 30, 2018.

The California Department of Justice, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Chief of the Department of Justice Bureau of Firearms Stephen J. Lindley, Director of the Office of Administrative Law Debra Cornez, and California State Controller Betty T. Yee are named as defendants in the complaint.

“The Department of Justice has grossly exceeded their authority and is illegally imposing its will on thousands of California gun owners,” said Raymond DiGuiseppe, a former California deputy attorney general who is representing the plaintiffs along with other attorneys. “Their  regulations and actions undermine the rule of law and put potentially hundreds of thousands of people at risk for serious criminal liability.”

Again, the Second Amendment could not be clearer.  What part of “shall not be infringed” do these people not understand.

“The government agencies responsible for enforcing the law must also follow the law,” said Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb. “This case is an important step in protecting law-abiding gun owners from an out-of-control regulatory state.”

I hope these men are successful in their endeavor, but it is California, after all.

Article posted with permission from Freedom Outpost