SAF Backs Motion for Summary Judgement in CA Gun Owners’ Privacy Case

A lot of you folks live in California. You have my most profound sympathies. 

This is a state that treats you with the utmost hostility they can manage. They’re constantly making it more difficult for you to exercise your right to keep and bear arms, and they don’t even care about maintaining your privacy while they do it.

I’m not even talking about the accidental data leaks, either. Those might have been the result of incompetence, but there’s little evidence it was intentional.

No, I’m talking about the intentional invasion of privacy they’re trying where they’ll just hand your data over to “researchers.” It’s bad enough they make you hand all that information over, but now they want to give it to academics who are going to use it to justify infringements on your rights.

However, there’s a lawsuit in the works, and the Second Amendment Foundation is throwing its weight behind a summary judgment.

From a press release:

Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in a lawsuit challenging the California Department of Justice’s disclosure of personal information for third-party “research” have filed a memorandum of points and authorities supporting their earlier motion for summary judgment. The case is known as Barba v. Bonta.

SAF is joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition, California Gun Rights Foundation, San Diego County Gun Owners PAC, Orange County Gun Owners PAC, Inland Empire Gun Owners PAC and a private citizen AshleyMarie Barba, for whom the case is named. They are represented by attorneys Bradley A. Benbrook and Stephen M. Duvernay at the Benbrook Law Group in Sacramento. Named as defendant in the case is Attorney General Rob Bonta. 

A hearing is scheduled next April 18 before Judge Katherine A. Bacal in San Diego County Superior Court.

Californians have been required to disclose personal information on handgun purchases since 1996. In 2014, the requirement was expanded to include long guns. In 2021, the legislature passed Assembly Bill 173, which now requires the California Department of Justice to share this information with the California Firearm Violence Prevention Center at UC Davis, and allows DOJ to share the information with other research institutions.

“This is an egregious violation of gun owners’ privacy rights,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “California citizens are not guinea pigs for social scientists at UC Davis or anywhere else. The court should bring a halt to this under Article 1, § 1 of the California Constitution.”

“California residents who purchase firearms should have a reasonable expectation that the confidential information they provide to the DOJ is not turned over to any third party entity for purposes unrelated to law enforcement,” SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut explained. “The provisions of AB 173 ignore and override this basic privacy right, and cannot be allowed.”

This would be bad enough if the researchers were absolutely interested in the truth, but we know how this information is going to be used. More accurately, we know how this information will be misused.

There is no legitimate reason for any researcher to need personal information. Moreover, the more this information gets shared, the more likely there is to be another leak of personal information, which is another way to assault people’s right to privacy.

In the mind of Californian officials, once you decide to own a gun, all rights go out the window.

I agree with Gottlieb on pretty much everything he said and I’m with the SAF in backing a summary judgment against the state of California. People don’t give up their right to privacy just because they want to exercise another right. That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works.

Unless, unfortunately, you’re in California unless the courts step up and act appropriately.