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Wednesday, March 27, 2024 | Back issues
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Judge refuses to block California from releasing gun owners’ personal info

Signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom last September, Assembly Bill 173 amended state firearms laws to allow California to turn over gun owners’ personal information to gun violence researchers.

SAN DIEGO (CN) — Finding there was no “emergency” to warrant restraining California from sharing millions of gun owners’ personal information with gun violence researchers, a federal judge Wednesday declined to block the state’s enactment of Assembly Bill 173.

U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns heard from attorneys for Jane and John Does and Attorney General Rob Bonta regarding a constitutional challenge to Assembly Bill 173, a law which amended California firearms laws to authorize the attorney general to disclose gun owners’ personal information to the California Firearm Violence Research Center at UC Davis and any other “bona fide research institution” meeting certain requirements.

Gun owners’ personal information — including their name, address and age — is collected with every firearms sale in California and entered into the “Automated Firearms System” database.

Additional personal information is collected from applicants who apply for a “Carry License” to carry a concealed firearms including Social Security number, California driver’s license or ID number, occupation, address, weight, height and reason for applying to carry the weapon.

Ammunition purchaser information is kept in the “Ammunition Purchase Records File” database.

As of Sept. 23 last year that information is now subject to researchers. In its brief opposing the temporary restraining order, the Attorney General’s Office confirmed the contested data had already been provided to the research center as well as Stanford.

Yet, the Does challenging the statue waited 78 days to request the state be blocked from sharing that information.

The filing delay — as well as concerns over whether the personal information could slip through the cracks of research institutions and be published publicly — dominated the more than 2-hour court hearing Wednesday.

Michael Reynolds of Snell & Wilmer told Burns, a George W. Bush appointee, waiting to file the lawsuit until this month was not unreasonable as there was “no time to review the law prior to its implementation.”

But when asked by Burns whether he contacted the Justice Department asking to be notified once gun owners’ personal information was provided to resarachers under the new statute, Reynolds confirmed he had not.

Reynolds’ gun-owning clients believed allowing researchers to access their personal information was not for “law enforcement purposes” and violated their privacy rights.

“Any or all of this information could be stolen by a university student with an ideological axe to grind,” Reynolds said.

He added: “What happens if individuals working within the institutions disseminate the information in violation of the protocol? There is no enforcement mechanism in the law."

Reynolds suggested Assembly Bill 173 could have a deterrent effect preventing people from exercising their Second Amendment rights because they do not want their personal information disclosed to gun violence researchers.

But Burns interrogated Reynolds’ suggestion research did not serve a law enforcement purpose.

“It seems to me a cop on the street does not have the training, background or education to allow him or her to draw conclusions about gun violence — that seems to me an academic chore police agencies would turn to outside researchers,” Burns said.

“Who would do this research if it weren’t academic researchers?” he added.

Deputy Attorney General Nelson Richards said Assembly Bill 173 was a “clarification statute” enacted to clarify the process and parameters of disclosure for gun violence research authorized by the 2016 Firearm Violence Research Act.

“One of the things it clarified is that personally identifying information cannot be disclosed to the public,” Richards said, calling concerns about public dissemination “unfounded.”

“It’s purely speculative — there’s very little chance this information will be publicly disclosed,” Richards said.

Burns questioned the process for determining whether a research organization was “bona fide” and not a gun reform advocacy organization that somehow manages to get access to the data “to expose or harass people.”

“How do you sort out an organization that might not have the true purpose of researching gun violence or suicide?” Burns asked.

Richards said that was unlikely to happen as researchers were required to be accredited by the Department of Education and to have an institution review board to ensure proper protections for people involved in research.

Burns asked both parties to further flesh out their arguments in legal briefs ahead of a preliminary injunction hearing scheduled for March 8.

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Categories / Civil Rights, Government, Law

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