Written by Vincent Cain
The fight over San Diego’s new ghost gun ordinance is heating up after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against the enforcement of this new law on Wednesday.
Gun owners first filed the lawsuit in the City of San Diego courts a month ago, only a couple of hours after the mayor had signed the ordinance. This new law bans the purchase, possession, sale, receipt, and transportation of homemade firearms that lack serial numbers, which are commonly referred to as “ghost guns.”
This ordinance that bans these non-serialized firearms goes into effect on Saturday.
After signing the ordinance on September 23, the mayor said, “The issue of gun violence in our city is significant and a lot of the growth we are seeing in this violence has been driven by ghost guns.” Todd Gloria also said that “We as a community cannot allow that to happen.”
The executive director of the San Diego Gun Owners Association, Michael Schwartz, said that the ordinance is ineffective and vague. He explained that this law bans legal gun owners from obtaining parts for guns because there is no process for putting serial numbers on unfinished gun parts.
The San Diego County Gun Owners PAC, Firearms Policy Coalition, as well as San Diego citizens that filed the lawsuit, have argued that this ordinance infringes on their second amendment rights. Adam Kraut, the senior director of legal operations for the Firearms Policy Coalition said, “The right of individuals to self-manufactured arms for self-defense and other lawful purposes is part and parcel of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and an important front in the battle to secure fundamental rights against abusive government regulations like San Diego’s unconstitutional ban”.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant wrote that this ordinance does not entirely ban the process of creating one’s own firearm but it does restrict the manufacturing of guns using unfinished frames and receivers only.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors Voted 3-2 to develop an ordinance similar to this one to ban these so-called ghost guns.
Photo Cred: Sandy Huffaker/ Getty Images
