Does anyone know if this will be appealed?

http://news.excite.com/news/r/000629/20/guns-california

Top Calif. court ok’s stronger assault weapons ban

Updated 8:39 PM ET June 29, 2000
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – In a decision that could further strengthen one of the nation’s toughest assault weapons bans, California’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state attorney general could add numerous new weapons to the outlawed list.
“The Supreme Court decision … represents a major victory for gun safety and public safety in California,” Attorney General Bill Lockyer said in a statement.

“My office will immediately begin taking the necessary steps to ensure that the state assault weapons laws will be fully and vigorously enforced.”

The Supreme Court’s decision overturned a state appeals court ruling which found portions of California’s 1989 Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act unconstitutional.

Gun owners and other plaintiffs had challenged a provision in the act that allowed the attorney general to petition courts to expand the ban by classifying new types of guns as assault weapons because of their similarity to existing weaponry covered by the ban.

After an initial legal defeat, the plaintiffs won their case before a state appeals court, which said the state law was unconstitutional on a number of grounds, including being “unduly vague”, failing to give advance warning of the conduct it prohibits, and violating the separation of powers act by delegating legislative powers to the courts.

The Supreme Court Thursday disagreed — saying the 1989 law violated neither the principle of due process or the separation of powers and equal protection doctrines.

Lockyer said the court’s ruling, which becomes final in 30 days, would allow his office to include at least 120 types of guns including the so-called “AK” series of semiautomatic weapons, could be added to the list of outlawed weaponry.

Luis Tolley, western director for Handgun Control Inc., said that in some ways the court’s decision came too late.

While the legal challenge was under way, California’s legislature in 1999 passed another measure which outlawed many of the same guns by adding a simple generic test to the 1989 law: if a gun had certain characteristics, such as semi-automatic firing and a detachable magazine, it was classified as an assault weapon.

“It’s now ten years and an awful lot of damage later,” Tolley said, saying that during the 1990s “tens of thousands” of copycat assault weapons flooded the California market.

But he added that the move was still important because it would give state regulators a “two-pronged” approach to banning assault weapons — defined either by characteristics, or by petition from the attorney general.

Archive: Fri Jun 30 Thu 29 Wed 28 Tue 27 Mon 26 Sun 25 Sat 24