“AB 1014 is a gun control nightmare,” said Brandon Combs, president of CAL-FFL. “California Democrats are taking their radical anti-gun agenda to an entirely new and horrifying level.” Combs, who debated the bill with Assemblymember Williams and UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler on the Los Angeles-based radio talk show “Which Way, LA?”, said that the bill “guts due process” and the presumption of innocence.
“The subject of a restraining order and confiscation warrant may not even know they have been accused until there’s a SWAT team at their door.”
According to the bill’s text, courts would be required to issue a restraining order if a person–who doesn’t even have to know the target of the order–submits a form saying that a gun owner “poses a significant risk of personal injury to himself, herself, or others by owning or possessing” guns.
Remarked CAL-FFL’s Combs, “In a fit of circular logic, AB 1014 makes the very exercise of Constitutional rights, like purchasing guns or knives, evidence supporting the issuance of a restraining order that would strip a person of those same rights. It’s absolutely insane.”
But the restraining orders aren’t the only problem with the bill, according to CAL-FFL. Assembly Bill 1014 would also mandate that courts order a “firearms seizure warrant” following a restraining order, forcing police and local law enforcement to “seize any firearms in the possession of the named person…from any place, or from any person in whose possession the firearm may be.”
CAL-FFL warned that the broad language of the seizure warrant could lead not only to midnight “no-knock” raids against the subject of the restraining order–who may not even know that their gun rights have been stripped away and that they are now a “prohibited person”–but also the homes of their friends and family, and even places of employment.
Combs believes that the bill’s language is ripe for abuse. “Cyber-bullies like Shannon Watts and her ‘Moms Demand Action’ extremists could simply go on Facebook or Twitter, grab a photo of you and your gun, and slap it on a restraining order request. There’s no criminal or civil penalty for filing false or vexatious reports and no provision for the recovery of damages and someone’s loss of rights. AB 1014 would make it open season on California gun owners.”
Combs continued, “On mere hearsay, an anti-gun judge could instigate a life-ending terror campaign against a gun owner and everyone who knows them.”