The case involved a challenge to the constitutionality of the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989 (AWCA), California legislation that banned the manufacture, sale, transportation, or importation of specified semi-automatic firearms.

The plaintiffs alleged that various provisions of the AWCA infringed upon their individual constitutionally-guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.

The opinion initially cited Michael Bellesiles, the historian who earlier in 2002 had resigned under pressure from Emory University and been stripped of his Bancroft Prize by Columbia University for using fabricated research arguing that during the early period of US history, guns were uncommon during peacetime and that a culture of gun ownership did not arise until the mid-nineteenth century; on January 27, 2003, Judge Reinhardt deleted the citation to Bellesiles and substituted research by political scientist Earl Kruschke in its place.

[3] The U.S. Supreme Court denied review,[4] despite the decision conflicting with the holding of the Fifth Circuit in United States v.

[5] In the U.S. Supreme Court case of District of Columbia v. Heller,[6] the opinion in Silveira v. Lockyer was overruled.