California's Unsafe Handgun Act effectively bans the sale of almost all semiautomatic pistols that were designed beginning in 2007, and all such pistols introduced in 2013 and thereafter. As explained in a previous post, in March, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney of the Central District of California issued a preliminary injunction in Boland v. Bonta against enforcement the law. The Ninth Circuit stayed the injunction pending appeal.
Along with co-counsel Dan Peterson, I filed an amici curiae brief in support of the plaintiffs on behalf of law enforcement and firearms rights groups. I'd like to share our major points. First, some background.
California bans pistols with designs introduced in 2007 and thereafter based on two features that the state requires but that consumers don't want or need. One is a magazine disconnect mechanism that prevents the pistol from being fired without a magazine; that's bad for emergency use in self-defense. The other is a chamber load indicator, a hole, protrusion, or visual indicator allowing one to tell if a round or cartridge is in the chamber; that's a substitute for the basic safety rule always to assume that a firearm is loaded. Almost no manufacturer makes pistols with both features.
