We all probably hate those people in our town who are so convinced of their righteousness that they try and push laws that make us want to hurl. Communities that allow citizens to create law based on petitions probably have more of a problem with this than the rest of us. After all, those people tend to feel empowered to try and cram laws down people’s throat.

Like this guy in Huntington Beach, California.

Horgan hastily wrote the gun-control initiative last fall, in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre. A few weeks later, he submitted his intent to circulate the petition with the City Clerk’s office.

“I basically wanted to ask the community, ‘Are you comfortable with the proliferation of AR-15s?’” Horgan said.

But then he sat on his idea for a while, unsure if he wanted to invest money in a cause that might never get off the ground.

Then came Feb. 14 – the day of the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.

“I was so tired of feeling helpless and hopeless about this carnage,” said Horgan, 42, a mortgage lender. “I needed to focus on a solution.”

However, Horgan ran smack into a problem. You see, it seems the people of Huntington Beach weren’t interested in his petition. After mailing them out, quite a few came back with nasty messages and one with pellet holes in it with a note on top directing him not to take that as a threat.

However, he also got something else that was kind of shocking. It seems the city of Huntington Beach itself wasn’t happy with him and they were going to get some satisfaction.

Already in his pajamas, Daniel Horgan didn’t expect to hear a knock on his door at 9 p.m. Even more surprising, his visitor swiftly tagged him with a lawsuit.

Yet another shocker was the plaintiff: Huntington Beach, where Horgan grew up and still resides.

“The Automatic Weapons Initiative is unconstitutional, invalid and not entitled to placement on the ballot,” the 25-page complaint reads.

“His initiative squarely hits the Second Amendment between the eyes and puts the city in opposition to state and federal law,” said City Attorney Michael Gates.

That’s right. The city is suing him for his anti-gun petition.

Now, I’m of two minds about this.

On the one hand, this is hilarious. Someone tries to take away his neighbors’ rights, and now he’s going to have to deal with a lawsuit from an entity he’s helping to fund through his tax dollars for that same effort? What about that isn’t hysterical?

But on the other hand, there’s the fact that he’s engaged in a lawful activity and that shouldn’t be punished. Yes, it’s a stupid, lawful activity and an activity that probably shouldn’t be lawful–namely the direct democracy angle, which is something our Founding Fathers never wanted for good reason–but it is still completely legal.

In the meantime, I’m going to just enjoy the schadenfreude of an anti-gunner now running smack dab into a problem ultimately of his own side’s creation. I mean, how many times can you try to disrupt the honest trade of legal manufacturers before it comes back to bite you on the tuckus? We’re fighting back, and this looks like another example.

While I don’t agree with the way this particular one is being done, mostly because I don’t want to see this done to our side. For now, I’m just going to giggle about the whole thing because of it happening to an anti-gunner and hope this stuff doesn’t get out of hand.