LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/state/20010629/t000053867.html
Friday, June 29, 2001
Challenge to Assault Gun Ban Upheld
Ruling: State high court says weapons are illegal only if they were
barred by name or have specific characteristics listed in a 1999 revision
of the law.
By MAURA DOLAN, Times Legal Affairs Writer
SAN FRANCISCO--Guns that are nearly identical to assault weapons
banned in California are legal unless they were outlawed by name or have
specific assault weapon characteristics, the California Supreme Court
ruled Thursday.
Chief Justice Ronald M. George, in a strongly worded dissent, accused
the high court's majority of creating a loophole in the state's assault
weapons ban that could allow copycat weapons to circulate.
The 4-2 decision allows the state attorney general to continue adding
names of guns to the list of banned weapons. But gun users may not be
prosecuted unless their weapons were specifically identified in a 1989 law
or covered by a more generic ban added by the Legislature in 1999, the
court said.
Justice Janice Rogers Brown, writing for the majority, said a
contrary ruling would have left gun owners and law enforcement unsure
about which weapons were banned.
"Not only would ordinary citizens find it difficult . . . to
determine whether a semiautomatic firearm should be considered an assault
weapon, ordinary law enforcement officers in the field would have similar
difficulty," Brown wrote.
The impact of the ruling will be limited by 1999 revisions to the
assault weapons law passed by the Legislature. In an attempt to go after
copycat weapons, lawmakers expanded the ban to include not only named
weapons but any guns that had specific characteristics.
For example, the manufacture, sale, loan or gift of ammunition
magazines capable of accepting more than 10 rounds was outlawed.
Military-style semiautomatic firearms also were banned based on generic
features, including a protruding pistol grip.
Dennis Henigan of the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence said he was
surprised and disappointed by the ruling, because it "could be a problem
if you had an attorney general who was hostile to the statute itself and
refused to list guns."
Henigan also said some assault weapons that are not on the list may
not have the characteristics included in the generic ban and will now be
legal under the ruling.
Some gun control advocates charged that former state Atty. Gen. Dan
Lungren, a Republican, was not aggressively enforcing the law. Current
Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, has added many guns to the banned
list, they said.
The high court ruling stemmed from a case brought by J.W. Harrott, a
Delano lawyer who accepted a gun collection in payment for legal services
in a drug trial.
The Kings County Sheriff's Department, which had the gun collection,
refused to give Harrott one of the weapons, a semiautomatic rifle, on the
grounds that it was an assault weapon banned by the 1989 law