The NRA/CRPAF’s Legal Action Project is currently supporting a lawsuit challenging three unconstitutional ordinances that restrict the rights of San Francisco gun owners.  The challenged ordinances ban all ammunition that “serves no sporting purpose,” completely prohibit the discharge of any firearm in the City (even for self-defense), and require all firearms in homes to be disabled with a trigger lock or stored in a manner that makes the firearm useless for immediate self-defense.

The case, Jackson v. San Francisco, had been stayed along with most other lawsuits challenging California firearms laws pending the resolution of the Nordyke v. Alameda case, which is still pending in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. But in the wake of the recent McDonald v. Chicago decision by the United States Supreme Court applying its Heller v. District of Columbia Second Amendment ruling to state and local governments, and despite the fact that the Nordyke case has not been concluded, NRA/CRPA Foundation lawyers asked the Court to remove the stay and let the case proceed. On September 13, 2010, the Court granted the request, despite the City’s opposition.

Click the links to view the Amended Complaint and Exhibits, Plaintiffs’ Motion for Relief from Stay, the Declaration of C.D. Michel in Support of the Motion, and the Court’s Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion.

Now that the stay has been lifted, NRA/CRPA Foundation lawyers are rapidly moving forward with appropriate court filings to stop the San Francisco laws from being enforced and to have them declared unconstitutional.

The strategic litigation is being funded exclusively by the NRA and the CRPA Foundation.  The case should serve as a strike against unconstitutional local gun control efforts, to ensure that similar restrictions will never be passed at the state level, to restore Second Amendment rights in California, and to maximize the potential for success in other current and future litigation efforts.

Seventeen years ago the NRA and CRPA joined forces to fight local gun bans being written and pushed in California by the gun ban lobby. Their coordinated efforts became the NRA/CRPA “Local Ordinance Project” (LOP) - a statewide campaign to fight ill conceived local efforts at gun control and educate politicians about available programs that are effective in reducing accidents and violence without infringing on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. In recent years cities in California, and now in other states as well, have been bombarded with gun ban lobby anti-gun proposals, including proposed complete bans on the possession of semi-automatic firearms misnamed “assault weapons” (where that term is defined far more broadly than under the state law) and misclassified “sniper rifles,” bans on magazines that hold over ten rounds, one-gun-per-month restrictions, ammo sales registration bureaucracies, “trigger lock” laws that prohibit many guns from being sold because no trigger lock exists that fits the gun, “safe” storage laws that would make criminals of those who keep a gun ready to use for self-defense, ultra restrictive zoning laws that put gun dealers out of business, gun show bans, oppressive gun and ammo taxes, and most recently, pending proposals to ban ammo sales entirely and to ban “ultra-compact” handguns (any gun under 6 3/4 inches long or under 4 ½ inches tall). The NRA/CRPA LOP has had tremendous success in beating back most of these anti-self-defense-civil-rights proposals, and several more lawsuits challenging some of these ordinances are pending.

In addition to fighting local gun bans, for decades the NRA has been litigating dozens of cases in California courts to promote the right to self-defense and the 2nd Amendment. In the post Heller v. District of Columbia legal environment, NRA and CRPA Foundation have formed the NRA/CRPA Foundation Legal Action Project (LAP), a joint venture to fight proactively to strike down ill-conceived gun control laws and ordinances and advance the rights of firearms owners, specifically in California.

Sometimes the chances of success are greater when LAP's litigation efforts are kept low profile, so the details of every lawsuit are not always released. But to see a partial list of the Legal Action Project's recent accomplishments, or to contribute to the NRA / CRPAF LAP and support this and similar Second Amendment cases, visit www.crpafoundation.org. All donations made to the CRPA Foundation will directly support litigation efforts to advance the rights of California gun owners.

Also, please register at www.calgunlaws.com and www.crpa.org to receive up to the minute updates on this and other California litigation efforts as it becomes available.  CalGunLaws.com is produced by Michel & Associates as a pro bono effort to keep attorneys and interested firearm owners informed on the existing laws and latest legal developments in California. It includes a link to the highly effective www.calnra.com California legislative status and grassroots action page.