A court ruled late last week that the state of California cannot compel the disclosure of private information about gun owners.
Assembly Bill 173 was declared unconstitutional by San Diego Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal in San Diego County after she granted an injunction against it. She reasoned that doing so would jeopardize the privacy rights of gun owners in California.
“Accordingly, plaintiffs have shown that the balance of harms weighs in favor of issuing the injunction,” the order noted.
The Reload reports:
The injunction represents a win for gun-rights advocates in their fight against the state’s attempts to share gun owners’ identifying information for outside research. The state already collects extensive data on gun and ammunition purchases–including an ammo registry. California’s practices make it an outlier, but one with the potential to be copied by other blue states seeking tighter gun laws. The successful injunction suggests advocates may be successful in permanently stopping the state from sharing that data with non-law enforcement entities and quash the potential for other states to follow California’s lead.
Assembly Bill 173, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom (D.) last September, directed the Attorney General to disclose personal information on gun purchasers to the California Firearm Violence Research Center at UC Davis. The information includes details such as the buyer’s name, address, date of birth, what they purchased, when and where they bought it, and more. It also authorized the center to share the information with any other “bona fide research institution.”
California government authorities have been embroiled in controversy over the personal information of gun owners before, as seen by Bacal’s injunction against AB 173. The California Department of Justice “accidentally” released the names, residences, dates of birth, racial makeup, and permit classifications of all the state’s concealed carry permit holders in June when launching the 2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal, The Reload exclusively reported in June.
Before authorities ultimately pulled the data offline, it had been accessible to the public for several hours for downloading. Since then, California authorities have provided credit monitoring to people impacted by the breach. Bacal used the leak as one illustration of the potential harm that AB 173 may cause to state gun owners.
“Defendant responds plaintiffs cannot establish irreparable harm because the personal identifying information has already been shared with researchers as recently as November of 2021,” she noted. “Yet this does not account for the potential ongoing and future harms that could occur by continuous use of the information. Furthermore, and while this motion has been pending, a massive data breach reportedly occurred that leaked personal identifying information from the firearm databases for concealed carry applicants in or about June of 2022.”
In January, a number of gun rights organizations in the state filed a lawsuit, citing unlawful invasions of gun owners’ privacy. Bill Sack, Director of Legal Operations for the Firearms Policy Coalition, stated in a news release, “The California government has proven time and time again that it can’t be trusted with the private personal information of its residents. Today’s ruling reinforces what FPC has been arguing all along; that you needn’t be forced to open your front door to immoral government intrusion in order to exercise your fundamental rights.”
A new gun law that was forwarded to the governor of California by the state’s Democratic supermajority legislature was approved by Gov. Gavin Newsom in July, and it is already anticipated that the U.S. Supreme Court will review it. The legislation is based on Texas’ infamous “heartbeat” abortion statute.
The Daily Wire noted that under SB-1327, “[a]ny person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state, may bring a civil action against any person” who knowingly breaches California’s ban on assault weapons or firearm components.
The law states that anyone who “[k]nowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets” a violation of the law may be held liable, “regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the person aided or abetted would be violating [it],” or “[k]nowingly commits an act with the intent to engage in the conduct described.”
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