SAN FRANCISCO — Guns that are nearly identical to assault weapons banned in California are legal unless they were outlawed by name or have specific assault weapon characteristics, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
Chief Justice Ronald M. George, in a strongly worded dissent, accused the high court's majority of creating a loophole in the state's assault weapons ban that could allow copycat weapons to circulate.
The 4-2 decision allows the state attorney general to continue adding names of guns to the list of banned weapons. But gun users may not be prosecuted unless their weapons were specifically identified in a 1989 law or covered by a more generic ban added by the Legislature in 1999, the court said.
Justice Janice Rogers Brown, writing for the majority, said a contrary ruling would have left gun owners and law enforcement unsure about which weapons were banned.
"Not only would ordinary citizens find it difficult . . . to determine whether a semiautomatic firearm should be considered an assault weapon, ordinary law enforcement officers in the field would have similar difficulty," Brown wrote.
The impact of the ruling will be limited by 1999 revisions to the assault weapons law passed by the Legislature. In an attempt to go after copycat weapons, lawmakers expanded the ban to include not only named weapons but any guns that had specific characteristics.
For example, the manufacture, sale, loan or gift of ammunition magazines capable of accepting more than 10 rounds was outlawed. Military-style semiautomatic firearms also were banned based on generic features, including a protruding pistol grip.
Dennis Henigan of the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence said he was surprised and disappointed by the ruling, because it "could be a problem if you had an attorney general who was hostile to the statute itself and refused to list guns."
Henigan also said some assault weapons that are not on the list may not have the characteristics included in the generic ban and will now be legal under the ruling.
Some gun control advocates charged that former state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, a Republican, was not aggressively enforcing the law. Current Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, has added many guns to the banned list, they said.
The high court ruling stemmed from a case brought by J.W. Harrott, a Delano lawyer who accepted a gun collection in payment for legal services in a drug trial.
