Texas state Sen. Bryan Hughes, who wrote the state’s abortion ban law, is downplaying California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push for gun legislation modeled after the law, The Texas Tribune is reporting.
Hughes, a Republican, said he didn’t believe his enforcement mechanism would be “effective against firmly constitutional rights.”
“I would tell Gov. Newsom good luck with that,” Hughes said Monday. “If California takes that route, they’ll find that California gun owners will violate the law knowing that they’ll be sued and knowing that the Supreme Court has their back because the right to keep and bear arms is clearly in the Constitution, and the courts have clearly and consistently upheld it.”
Newsom, D-Calif., said he plans to use a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on strict abortion curbs in Texas to design a law that would allow private citizens to sue some gun manufacturers, distributors and sellers, Reuters reported.
According to the outlet, the Supreme Court on Friday left in effect the Texas law that enables private citizens to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy.
“I am outraged by [the] U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Texas’s ban on most abortion services to remain in place,” Newsom said in a statement.
“If states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm’s way.”
