Florida – June 9, 2023 – America’s Future, Inc., a national leader in the fight to preserve individual rights, promote American values and traditions, and protect the nation’s Constitutional Republic, announced that it filed an Amicus Brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Lance Boland, et al. v Rob Bonta, et al. (9th Cir. Dkt. No. 22-55276). The case will decide the constitutionality of California’s “Unsafe Handgun Act” or UHA, a state gun statute. The June 2, 2023 brief was filed jointly with seven nonprofit organizations, supporting the plaintiffs’ positions and advocating for affirmance of a March 20, 2023 preliminary injunction issued by California’s central federal district court.

“Our constitutional rights must not be infringed, and that includes the right to bear arms as written in the Second Amendment of our Bill of Rights,” said Mary O’Neill, Executive Director of America’s Future. “We urge the Circuit Court to uphold the preliminary injunction and protect the Constitution for all citizens.”

The plaintiffs have challenged the constitutionality of three provisions of the UHA, arguing violations of the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The three provisions of the state statute at issue are (1) the requirement that “certain handguns…have a chamber load indicator (‘CLI’), which is a device that indicates whether a handgun is loaded”; (2) the requirement that “certain handguns to have a magazine disconnect mechanism (‘MDM’), which prevents a handgun from being fired if the magazine is not fully inserted”; and (3) the requirement that “certain handguns have the ability to transfer microscopic characters representing the handgun’s make, model, and serial number onto shell casings when the handgun is fired, commonly referred to as microstamping capability.”

As background, on March 20, 2023, at the trial level, California federal district court judge from the central district, the Hon. Cormac Carney applied the test set forth by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in NY Rifle & Pistol Assn v Bruen (2022) and determined that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed at trial insomuch as all three provisions do, in fact, unconstitutionally infringe Second Amendment rights of citizens. As a result of Judge Carney’s findings, the district court granted plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, blocking the enforcement of the three provisions at issue.

To read more details about this filing, along with other briefs filed by America’s Future, please visit our Law & Policy page.