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California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office quietly signed a settlement agreement in federal court admitting his agency’s gun-registration website was so poorly designed that potentially thousands of Californians were unable to register their assault weapons and comply with state law.
Under the terms of the settlement filed Wednesday in U.S. Eastern District Court in Sacramento, the state Department of Justice is required to notify each district attorney and law enforcement agency to put on hold “all pending investigations and prosecutions” for those suspected of failing to register their assault weapons.
The settlement agreement is a major setback for one of California’s signature pieces of gun control legislation. It comes 11 months after a federal judge said the state’s newly implemented online ammunition background-check program was so glitchy that tens of thousands of otherwise legal firearms owners were barred from buying ammunition — in violation of their 2nd Amendment rights.
The problems with California’s gun-registration website didn’t come up during the confirmation hearings, but critics say they should have. Becerra is now running an agency responsible for monitoring the nation’s healthcare system and tracking its healthcare data.
“I think what we learned from this experience in this lawsuit is that failing systems not only are acceptable,” but Becerra allowed inside his Department of Justice “a culture to thrive that doesn’t care about people,” said Brandon Combs, the president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, one of the gun-rights groups that originally sued Becerra’s office.
In 2018, three gun owners and 2nd Amendment groups filed a lawsuit in Shasta County Superior Court, alleging that thousands of gun owners tried to register their weapons on the state’s website, but the system kept crashing, and they said they received little help when they called and emailed Becerra’s office trying to get the problem fixed.
The law made no exception for technical errors that prevented someone from properly registering. Possessing an unregistered assault weapon is either a misdemeanor or felony. Transporting an unregistered assault weapon is a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison.
Often, the information on a person’s identification card didn’t match what officials had entered into the California gun registry database, which retail sellers must review when they do the ammunition background check.
Some ammunition buyers told The Bee that the system was so glitchy that they ended up having to buy a new gun to get ammunition for the guns they already owned. Active duty and retired law enforcement officers told The Bee that the system also blocked them from buying ammunition.
“If the state objective is to make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for its law-abiding citizens to purchase protected ammunition, then this law appears to be well-drafted,” Benitez said.