High Court lets weapons ban stand

California's 1989 law was passed in part as a response to a school yard shooting in Stockton, Calif., that year in which five children died. The gunman sprayed the playground with a semiautomatic AK-47 rifle before killing himself.

The law was a compromise that backers knew would not cover all forms of assault weapons. Instead, the law banned future sales of specific models of military-style semiautomatic weapons and included a provision that the state attorney general could ask courts to ban other models down the line.

Gun control advocates prefer bans that describe the action or characteristics of a prohibited gun without regard to a specific make or model. That way copies of a banned gun are banned automatically.

California amended the 1989 law a decade later to add that kind of coverage.

The original California law withstood a constitutional challenge that never made it to the Supreme Court. Several other states patterned assault weapons bans on the California law, although some made their bans more comprehensive from the start.

This case focused on the way the California attorney general and state courts can revise and expand the law to cover models that were not originally on the banned list.

A group of California men and the gunmaker Colt's argued that through the expansion mechanism "the attorney general is now able to accomplish through the judicial back door what there was insufficient political support to accomplish in the legislature."

It is not fair that some models end up banned while similar models are not, the suit said.

As applied, the law violates the Constitution's guarantee of equal treatment under the law in part because gun owners and dealers are cut out of the decision when new models are proposed for the ban, and the state does not do enough to inform those most directly affected that their guns may be illegal, the suit claimed.

The California Supreme Court upheld the add-on procedure last year.

The case is Kasler v. Lockyer, 00-981.<