NRA-ILA 8/10/2018
Imagine if California, to combat what the legislature considered the serious problem of manmade global warming, required all new vehicles sold by car dealers in the state to run on grass clippings, rather than fossil fuels.
Would it be fair to say that California was legitimately addressing serious environmental problems and promoting innovation?
Or would the more obvious conclusion be that California simply wanted to ban the sale of new cars?
If you agree with second option, you’d likely be in the minority of a recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel that found another non-existent technology – in that case, a microstamping requirement that applies to newly-introduced semiautomatic pistols – to be consistent with the Second Amendment.
In other words, two out of three judges ruled design requirements that no manufacturer can satisfy nor that are useful enough to be in development by any manufacturer can still be a prerequisite for the lawful commercial sale of constitutionally-protected handguns in the state.
The third judge, Jay S. Bybee – a George W. Bush appointee – dissented from the majority’s ruling on the microstamping issue. “[W]e must,†he wrote, “take Plaintiffs Second Amendment claims seriously.â€
The case is Pena v. Lindley.
The dispute stems from California’s so-called “Unsafe Handgun Act†(UHA). The UHA purports to promote public safety by weeding out “unsafe†handguns from commercial sale by a series of design requirements for semiautomatic pistols that must be met by the manufacturer. These include a “chamber load indicator,†a “magazine detachment mechanism†(to prevent firing of the pistol with the magazine removed), and a requirement that the pistol legibly imprint an array of information (including the firearm’s make, model, and serial number) on two locations on each fired cartridge case. The microstamping requirement took effect in 2013, when then-attorney general Kamala Harris determined “that the technology used to create the imprint is available to more than one manufacturer unencumbered by any patent restrictions."
To offer new models of pistols for sale in the state, manufacturers must submit three samples to a state-certified laboratory for testing, as well as pay for the testing and other administrative costs. All three pistols must meet standards established in regulations by the California Department of Justice (CDOJ) in multiple repetitions of required tests. Significantly, CDOJ’s dual microstamping standards were not designed around proven, existing technology. Rather, they were purposely designed to force manufacturers to develop and adopt technology that was not yet available in the commercial sphere.
To date, however, no manufacturer has done so, and as far as industry representatives involved in the case were aware, no manufacturer has no plans or intentions to try. This is manifestly because of an industry-wide belief that any microstamping that could satisfy CDOJ’s standards is technically infeasible and even if developed would be ineffective, easily defeated, and economically impractical.
The upshot is that the only firearms that may be commercially sold in the state are designs that existed before the date in 2013 on which the microstamping mandate took effect. Such models are “grandfathered†under the law, provided the manufacturer continues to satisfy the bureaucracy and fees necessary to keep them on the California’s roster of “not unsafe†handguns. Any changes to the design – including non-mandatory safety features that weren’t incorporated in 2013 – requires the model to be retested and to meet the current standards, including those pertaining to microstamping.
More:
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20180810/divided-appeals-panel-upholds-california-ban-on-post-2013-pistols
