SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – Four gun-owners rights organizations on Friday sued Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva over his repeated attempts this week to shut down firearms dealers, contending that his actions violate citizens’ constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms.
“Shuttering access to arms necessarily shutters the Constitutional right to those arms,” says the federal lawsuit filed by the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association of America, California Gun Rights Foundation, and Firearms Policy Coalition on behalf of individual gun buyers and a Los Angeles firearm and ammunition retailer.
Meanwhile, libertarian economist and actor Ben Stein sued Gov. Gavin Newsom, challenging whether California’s unprecedented restrictions on social movement can actually be enforced.
Gun-owner rights organizations have asked the federal government to end the debate nationwide over whether gun shops can remain open despite growing stay-at-home orders aimed at reducing the spread of the coronavirus. They want the U.S. government to specifically add them to official lists of essential services.
They say the Los Angeles lawsuit is the first in California to challenge forced closures. It could end a patchwork of such decisions that has Villanueva ordering them closed to the public in the nation’s most populous county, while other California sheriffs declare them to be vital.