California Law Allowing Private Residents To Sue Gunmakers Takes Effect

A new California This year saw the implementation of gun law that allows private citizens and retailers to sue manufacturers and sellers for selling prohibited firearms.

California’s new regulations give private citizens the ability to sue anyone who imports, distributes, manufactures, or sells assault firearms, homemade weapons, ghost guns, or .50 BMP rifles.

The law, Senate Bill (SB)1327 also restricts firearm sales to those under 21 years of age.

These Existing restrictions are already in place CaliforniaHowever, the new law allows citizens to sue violators up to $10,000

This This is the modeled after Texas Heartbeat Act Private citizens can sue anyone who performs abortions after a doctor has detected the heartbeat of a fetal. In This law allows citizens to file lawsuits against doctors, clinics and anyone involved in abortion.

“California explicitly passed this bill, SB 1327, as sort of a response to Texas’s policy decision,” Attorney Jim ManleyWith the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation?, told The Epoch Times. “This is sort of a weird way of restricting certain rights by not involving the state in the process.”

The By doubling the existing restrictions on firearm dealers, law creates an additional layer of restrictions California gun bans.

HoweverGuns deals cannot challenge SB1327 because the state no longer imposes the restrictions. Instead, individual citizens would enforce them. Manley said.

“Assault weapons, .50 BMGs, and firearms being sold to people under 21 were already illegal in California,” Manley said. “And the [law] is explicit in saying this does not change that. This just creates another avenue to enforce those restrictions.”

When California When SB 1327 was first introduced by legislators, the state did no have any restrictions on homemade firearms or ghost weapons. But Within one month of passing the bill the state included them.

It’s rare for a state to institute “double enforcement”—with private cause of action laws and criminal penalties—for the same restrictions, Manley said.

The additional layer of restrictions means that even if a judge overturned the state’s criminal restrictions on gun laws, private citizens would still be able to enforce them.

“It’s kind of a weird, convoluted situation,” Manley said.

The Legislators who included a provision for a new law were the first to pass it. “fee-shifting” provision allowing the state to collect attorney’s fees from anyone who sued over the law. But A federal judge San Diego This provision was blocked December.

The Gun Owners Of California Organization opposed the legislation, claiming that the law would create “a legal mess and is designed to bankrupt gun businesses.”

“The judge found [the law] was unconstitutional and he called it tyrannical,” Gun Owners Of California Executive Director Sam Paredes Submitted The Epoch Times.

The group doesn’t anticipate the law to be enforced until the legal resolution is completed.

“We’re waiting to see what the state’s going to do,” Paredes said.

The Texas The law governing abortion rights was passed before the Supreme Court The historic June 24 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Decision overturned Roe v. WadeThe 1973 precedent that legalized abortion in the United States. United States.

The Rule essentially made Texas’s law moot, said Manley, of Pacific Legal Foundation.

The California If the law was repealed, it will be automatically repealed. Texas The Constitution of the United States invalidates all laws relating to abortion rights. United States Or Texas supreme courts.

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