BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has filed its opposition to a motion by California Attorney General Rob Bonta for summary judgment in a December 2020 case challenging the state’s one-handgun-per-month limit. The case is known as Nguyen v. Bonta.
Joining SAF in the lawsuit are the Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., San Diego County Gun Owners PAC, North County Shooting Center, Inc., PWGG, L.P., a limited partnership, and six private citizens. Defendants are California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Luis Lopez, director of the state Department of Justice, Bureau of Firearms in their official capacities. The original lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego, and so was SAF’s new opposition document. Plaintiffs are represented by attorney Raymond M. DiGuiseppe of Southport, N.C.
As noted in the response, SAF and its partners tell the court, “After almost three years of litigation, three rounds of dispositive briefing, and being on the cusp of yet another expansion of the 30-day commercial firearm purchase ban at issue here (the “OGM law”), a proper resolution is not just long overdue but of pressing need. The right outcome was clear way back before Bruen, when this case was first filed…the OGM law must be stricken as unconstitutional.”
“We’re seeing a troubling pattern in litigation in which defendants try to drag out the process,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “As we note in our opposition, in moving for a summary judgment, the state is trying to ‘spare the OMG law the full brunt of proper scrutiny, steer the analysis right back into the prohibited field of “means-end” scrutiny, and hopefully avoid its otherwise inevitable constitutional demise.’ Clearly, California is trying to defend the indefensible while protecting an unconstitutional law and the state will be dragged kicking and screaming to the 21st Century reality that the law is wrong.”
“The material facts, alone, make it clear the OGM law can’t survive constitutional scrutiny,” added SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “Especially since Bruen, the state cannot provide any historical analogous evidence such limits existed at the time the Second Amendment was written. Therefore, the law must be found unconstitutional.”