CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has joined 23 other state AGs in support of a challenge to the constitutionality of California’s Unsafe Handgun Act.
The coalition filed an amicus brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
“Let’s call this what it is: an attack against lawful gun owners,” Morrisey said. “We need to keep our Second Amendment gun rights intact, not only to protect our citizens, but all legitimate gun owners as well.”
According to Morrisey's office, California’s Unsafe Handgun Act lists handguns approved for retail sale, including older handguns grandfathered into the act. It allows handguns for retail sale only if they come with a chamber load indicator, magazine disconnect mechanism and microstamping capability.
No handgun sold in the United States has all three, and thus, no handguns have been added to the roster since 2013. And, grandfathered handguns have ways of falling off the roster, the coalition of AGs says.
In March, a federal district court judge issued an injunction against parts of the act, ruling that Californians “should not be forced to settle for decade-old models of handguns to ensure that they remain safe inside or outside the home. But unfortunately, the Unsafe Handgun Act’s chamber load indicator, magazine disconnect mechanism, and microstamping requirements do exactly that.”
“In most of the country, Americans can freely acquire the handguns that are ‘in common use at the time,’ as is their constitutional right,” according to the coalition’s brief. “But in California, Americans are barred from purchasing such arms and instead limited to buying hypothetical handguns that have yet to hit the market. That turns the right to purchase ‘the sorts of weapons ... in common use at the time’ on its head — restricting citizens to weapons so uncommon they aren’t even made or sold.”
Morrisey joined the Idaho-led brief with Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.