What’s worse than living in a police state? Living in a police state with stupid cops. And clueless judges. (That’s some world-class legal snark in that link there.) Oh, the deliciousness of the irony. Cue Gene Hoffman:
A couple of weeks ago, I posted that the the court had granted the California DOJ’s motion to dimiss our complaint based on the theory that Mr. Richards and Mr. Haynie did not have a realistic chance of being rearrested. While the MTD was pending, Mr. Richards was actually arrested again on August 14 in Sonoma County by Sonoma sheriffs for possession of an M1A with what they thought was a flash hider attached. The same criminalist from CA DOJ cleared the weapon and charges were dismissed in September. As such, we’ve amended the complaint and taken the position that as applied, PC 12276.1 is unconstitutional as DA’s and LEO’s continue to arrest people for banned weapons when they are actually innocent and are in fact in possession of arms protected by the Second Amendment.
Emphasis mine. I sure am glad my California-legal M1A’s up in Washington State getting repaired and not down here where I might be tempted to take it to the range and get arrested for it. Sheesh.
On the other hand, this may very well be THE case declaring California’s assault-weapons ban unconstitutional. In at the ground floor….
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David,
If you’re an attorney, then you should realize that despite the irony of Richard’s re-arrest, it takes much more than the behavior of a handful of police officers before a law becomes unconstitutionally vague and ambiguous.
As a purely political matter (of embarrassment and damage control), this event may push the California DOJ to issue better guidelines about identifying so-called assault weapons. But this case simply isn’t going to be “THE case declaring California’s assault weapons ban unconstitutional.â€
And Gene Hoffman should stop misleading California gun owners otherwise.
Did you read the amended complaint in its entirety? There’s much more there than just keystone kops doing their thing. In particular, a long-running Calguns chess game that already got California’s AG to admit, on the record, that they CAN’T explain/train the assault weapons law in a coherent or enforceable fashion has finally borne fruit.