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SACRAMENTO — The Fresno County district attorney and firearms advocates sued the state attorney general Monday for ambiguous language in the state’s landmark assault weapons law. 

District Attorney Ed Hunt said an amendment to the 1989 Assault Weapon Control Act was incomprehensible and created confusion for gun owners and law enforcement officials. 

“Without clarification, it’s impossible to know what is legal and what isn’t,” Hunt said in a written statement. “I simply can’t do my job, and I can’t do justice under these confusing circumstances.” 

The rare suit, pitting one prosecutor against another, seeks an injunction preventing the law from going into effect and asks for an extension for gun owners to register until the law is clarified. 

The suit was filed in Fresno Superior Court by Hunt, Fresno gun shop owner Barry Bauer, the Law Enforcement Alliance of America and the California Sporting Goods Association. 

Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who heads the state’s Department of Justice, was surprised by the lawsuit, said spokeswoman Hallye Jordan. She said she never heard of a prosecutor suing another prosecutor. 

Under the 1999 amendment, Lockyer set regulations last year requiring registration of guns with military-style characteristics such as a pistol grip, folding stock, or flash suppressor. 

But gun advocacy lawyer Chuck Michel, who filed the suit, said there are inconsistencies in the law and that vague language leaves gun owners unwittingly open to prosecution. 

The Department of Justice’s definition of a flash suppressor, for example, includes weapons that don’t have the devices designed to dull the blaze of gunfire, Michel said. 

“Nobody knew what these things are,” said Michel of Los Angeles. “It’s something beyond the ken of the usual law abiding gun owner.” 

Jordan said the regulations are clear and Hunt and Fresno County law enforcement officials have never taken part in Department of Justice assault weapon training sessions. 

The department ran newspaper and radio ads, notified gun dealers and organizations, and set up a Web site and toll-free number to publicize the law, in addition to a series of public hearings on the regulations. 

Gun owners who didn’t register their weapons by the end of last year are subject to prosecution and could face a $500 fine and a jail or prison term. 

The state Department of Justice has registered 150,400 assault weapons in the last decade since passing the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989, the nation’s first assault weapon law. 

State legislators put the law on the books after a gunman, Patrick Purdy, fired a semiautomatic weapon into a Stockton school yard, killing five children and injuring 30.