The Second Amendment Foundation, along with the Calguns Foundation has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review their challenge of California’s restrictive “Unsafe Handgun Act” that allegedly violates the Second Amendment by prohibiting the sale of handguns that may be commonly owned and are perfectly legal in other parts of the country.
The “Unsafe Handgun Act” generally prohibits the manufacture, import or distribution of handguns that do not meet California’s restrictive design requirements under the state penal code, SAF said in a news release. According to the petition, the ultimate result of this scenario is that the state is “gradually achieving a handgun ban” because gun makers cannot meet the impossible requirements, which include microstamping. That technology is not offered by any handgun manufacturer because it cannot be practically implemented, the petition notes.
The petition refers to a statement from the CEO of Sturm, Ruger, one of the nation’s premier manufacturers of quality handguns, in which he observed that California’s “law requires the technology to perform at a level that Ruger cannot practically implement and, to [his] knowledge, has never been achieved by any manufacturer.”
SAF and Calguns are joined by private citizens Ivan Pena, for whom the case is named, plus Dona Croston, Roy Vargas and Brett Thomas. They are represented by attorneys Donald Kilmer of California and Alan Gura of Virginia. The case is known as Pena v. Horan.
“Our challenge of the California Unsafe Handgun Act (UHA), if the high court accepts it for review, could be a critical wake-up call to lower federal courts that continue to employ what they call an ‘interest-balancing approach’ to deciding gun control cases because that strategy is forbidden by the 2008 Heller decision,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb.
That’s not an insignificant issue, considering that it seems some judges on the lower federal bench seem to pretend that the Heller and McDonald rulings don’t really mean what they say.
“It is time to bring a halt to what is essentially a revolt by the lower courts against the landmark Heller opinion, and the Pena case could provide that vehicle,” Gottlieb stated.
He also signaled that the two newest faces on the high court – Associate Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, both considered conservatives and “constitutional originalists” – might want the court to accept this case in order to “once again visit the Second Amendment and further restore its rightful place as a cornerstone of the Bill of Rights.”
