Mr. X v Becerra

Mr. X v Becerra…

Another win for the Law Offices of Lieberman and Taormina, LLP, as well as a strike against tyranny!

So, I know you are all interested in knowing what is about to happen on July 1st regarding ammo.  Well, the short answer is I don’t know.  If Judge Benitez (St. Benitez) can be used as a guide, then there exists a strong possibility of an injunction being issued on June 30th (similar to what he did in Duncan v Becerra).  As of this writing, no injunction is on the table so we have to wait and see…  DOJ has been busy though…

The preliminary regs for the upcoming ammo catastrophe have been issued; interestingly enough, an emergency reg for driver licenses has also been issued!

BATFE came out and issued a statement awhile back saying that the dubious driver licenses California now issues (yes… the ones that you get by default unless you demand a more robust driver license… the one that was developed to allow illegal aliens to get a driver license without having to show residency proof) are a worthless as a form of ID, at least to the extent of buying firearms.

Sooo… the Feds say, “Yeah… we will accept the ones that say “All Federal Limits Apply”.  California, on the other hand, says NO!  You can’t accept it!  It is worthless!… And, yet, this is what the DMV issues to all applicants by default!… Oh… and serves as ID for purposes of voting?!?!?

Sigh.

We will talk more about this later… right now I have some good news I have been hoping to share for quite some time…

The Law Offices of Lieberman and Taormina did it again!  We killed it in the case of  “Mr. X v Becerra”!!!!!  We literally just got news that we won!

(Obviously our client was not “Mr. X”… that is done for privacy concerns.)

This is a lesson in the malevolent failure of government bureaucracy… coupled with the arrogance of power… an arrogance that manifests at all levels.

Background:

Mr. X was given our name by the National Rifle Association.  You see, he had attempted to purchase a firearm and was denied based on a finding that Mr. X was 5250 (CA WIC § 5250 certifying that he is “gravely mentally disabled, a danger to himself or others” and, thus, subject to a lifetime ban on firearm ownership and use).

Problem is, Mr. X is not, nor has he ever been, “gravely disabled”… hell, he hasn’t even been “a little disabled”!

Back in the early 90s when Mr. X was a teenager he began experimenting with narcotics, enough that his parents became concerned… not enough, however, to keep him from ultimately going to college, grad school, and becoming a certified public accountant. 

(If you have arrived here from our newsletter, continue reading here…)

Oh… one other thing… and this is the best:  Mr. X was “anti-gun”.

Now, while he may have been an anti, he was not stupid.  He saw what was happening in our state, and having just had twins with his wife, decided now was the time to get a gun for home protection.  Not knowing anything about guns, he first decided to take a weapons class and then, ultimately, decided to buy a Sig.  It was during the purchase of the Sig that the 5250 issue manifested resulting in a denial of the DROS.

He knew that his parents had taken him to a drug treatment program back in the 90s… but there was never any indication that a mental competency hearing was part of it.  He had never been put under special custodial care, and there was no mandate of follow-up continual treatment after the drug treatment program was over.  In fact, there was never any form of communication between Mr. X, Mr. X’s parents, or anyone for that matter, that Mr. X was even in the universe of someone needing mental health treatment.

What we later discovered was that some clerk, yep literally a clerk, had checked a box on an admission form from a the treatment facility that stated Mr. X was 5250.  This information had been sent to CA DOJ and finally became known when Mr. X attempted to buy a gun.

A simple clerical error that could easily be fixed, right?

It took four court visits, multiple motions, and oral arguments before a judge before we were finally able to get an order last week rehabilitating Mr. X.  The time line:  roughly two years!

At each level of the judicial system we were met with incompetence or, in some instances, outward hostility towards our desire to restore Mr. X’s rights that never should have been abrogated in the first place.

I tend to look at the actions of the State and I see complete and utter incompetence.

Cosmo tends to look at the actions of the State and see calculated adversarial manipulation.

We have agreed that the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle… a term we have coined “criminal indifference” is probably the most appropriate way of describing the drones of the system.

On this one, though, I think the scales are tipped towards Cosmo’s theory. 

This was a victory that came through sheer perseverance.  The State knew what it was doing and what it could get away with.  This was going to be a war of attrition and we simply had more of an interest in the pursuit of justice than it had in not admitting a mistake.

Regardless… a win is a win!… And Cosmo and I will raise our glasses again in a toast to the fall of tyranny and the sovereignty of the individual made whole through the grace of God!

Oh… and “Beat Navy!”

Hooyah!