In last year New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. The bridgethe U.S. Supreme Court overturned that state’s restrictions on public ownership of handguns for self-defense. A week later, the Court reversed four appeals court decisions upholding state gun control laws and remanded the cases for further review in light of The bridge. One of those cases, Duncan vs. Bontaconcerned California’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds, which a federal judge found unconstitutional in a decision released Friday.
“There is no American history or tradition of regulating firearms based on the number of bullets they can shoot, or of regulating the amount of ammunition that can be stored and transported,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez for the Southern. District of California. “Because the state failed to justify its far-reaching ban and expropriation mandate with a relevant historical analogy, [California’s magazine limit] is hereby declared unconstitutional in its entirety and shall be enjoined.” Benitez suspended his order for ten days, giving California time to appeal his decision.
This wasn’t the first time Benitez concluded that California’s restriction on warehouse capacity violated the Second Amendment. In 2017, at an earlier stage of the case, then known as Duncan vs. BecerraBenitez issued a preliminary injunction against Proposition 63, a 2016 ballot initiative that banned the possession of what California calls “large capacity magazines” (LCMs). That initiative expanded a 2000 law that already banned the production, importation and distribution of LCMs, which previously allowed continued ownership of magazines acquired before the ban.
Two years later, Benitez made that order permanent and expanded it to the previous restrictions on LCMs. “The California law prohibiting the acquisition and possession of magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds places a severe limitation on the home’s core right of self-defense so that it amounts to an annulment of that right and is unconstitutional under any level of research. ,” he wrote. That decision was initially upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, but was reversed in 2021. On the couch This is the ruling that the Supreme Court overturned last year. The 9th Circuit responded by sending the case back to Benitez.
This time the plaintiffs had an even stronger case. below The bridgelaws regulating conduct covered by the “plain text” of the Second Amendment must be consistent with “this country’s historic tradition of firearms regulation.” California struggled to meet that test.
The state, which asked for and was granted additional time to study the historical record, “prepared a list of 316 laws covering 550 years – from 1383 to 1933.” Many of those laws were “irrelevant” in assessing the original public understanding of the right to keep and bear arms, Benitez says, because they were enacted before 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified, or well after 1868, when the 14th Amendment was passed. The amendment required states to respect that right. And almost the rest involved issues far removed from limiting magazine capacity, such as how weapons could be carried or used.
When asked to identify the best historical analogy for the sweeping ban in general
capacity magazines,” Benitez says, California cited a 1784 New York City law that imposed a 28-pound limit on the amount of gunpowder that could be stored in a building. But that law had “nothing to do with gun violence,” Benitez notes . . It was before”a fire safety regulationThe same was true of a 19th century law cited by California that prohibited Boston residents from leaving loaded, unattended firearms in buildings.
In 1868, California also noted, a dozen states had laws banning the carrying of concealed pistols. “Concealed carry laws do not prohibit the possession of handguns for all lawful purposes, nor the open carrying of weapons,” Benitez noted. And none had long guns or ammunition containers included in their restrictions. Pocket pistols were perfectly legal to keep at home and use for self-defense. Banning the concealed carry of a handgun was constitutionally only allowed if a citizen could keep the same freely and carrying. openly shooting.”
In contrast, “the current ban on high-capacity magazines prohibits carrying magazines in any manner – and even more restrictively prohibits simple possession.” Other laws that California presented as analogous to the LCM ban include restrictions on bladed weapons, which are clearly not an example of “firearm regulation,” and a ban on “trap guns,” which did not apply to any particular type of firearm, but on the practice of letting them go as a precaution against intruders.
One might object that removable magazines are a relatively recent technological development, and thus it is not reasonable to require close historical analogues from the 18th or 19th centuries. But Benitez notes that “the repeat Henry and Winchester rifles that were popular at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment were already a dramatic technological advance in firearms.” Those “popular lever-action rifles had large tubular magazines that held a lot of ammunition and could be fired multiple times in succession accurately and quickly,” he says. Yet “there are no state bans on the possession or manufacture of these lever-action rifles on the state list.”
Although “detachable magazines were invented in the late 1800s,” Benitez says, the first restriction on them wasn’t implemented until 1990, when New Jersey imposed a fifteen-round limit, which was later reduced to ten rounds. Even today, such limits are unusual. “Our federal government and most states do not impose limits,” Benitez notes, “and in the states where limits are imposed, there is no consensus” on the appropriate limit. The rules range from New York’s defunct seven-round limit, which was ruled unconstitutional, to Delaware’s 17-round limit.
In short, Benitez says, “There is no American tradition of limiting ammunition capacity,” and “the ten-round limit has no historical background.” He calls it ‘arbitrary’, ‘erratic’ and ‘extreme’.
Given the difficulty in demonstrating that California’s 10-round limit is “consistent with this nation’s historic tradition of firearms regulation,” the state is falling back on a policy argument that seeks to reduce the benefits of LCMs in the area of self-defense against the danger they pose in the fight against firearms. the hands of mass murderers. “Over the past half century,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in explaining his plan to appeal Benitez’s ruling, “high-capacity magazines have been used in approximately three-quarters of gun homicides involving ten or more deaths occurred and in 100 percent of the murders. gun murders with twenty or more deaths. We will continue to fight for our authority to protect Californians from gun advancements designed to cause mass casualties.”
That is a problem for Bonta The bridge expressly excludes such an “interest rate equilibrium approach”. Another problem: California implicitly admits that LCMs can be useful for self-defense. The ban exempts current and former law enforcement officers, a provision that would be confusing if magazines that can hold more than ten rounds had no legitimate use. Furthermore, California’s argument that the need to change magazines can have life-or-death consequences in the context of a mass shooting means the same is true in self-defense situations.
California insists a 10-round limit could create a “critical pause” during which a mass shooter’s targets can escape or disarm him. But “from the perspective of a victim trying to defend her home and family,” Benitez noted in 2019, “the time it takes to reload a gun after the tenth shot could become a ‘lethal pause’ because it usually takes a few minutes. the victim takes much longer to reload (if he can do so at all) than an perpetrator planning an attack. In other words, the reloading pause that the state seeks in hopes of stopping a mass shooter also tends to create an even situation. more dangerous time for any victim who has to try to defend themselves with a small capacity magazine.”
Benitez reiterated that point in last Friday’s decision. “There have been, and there will be, times when far more than ten rounds are required to stop attackers,” he writes, describing several real-life cases to illustrate that scenario. “Under this statute, the state says ‘too bad.’”
California states that such situations are rare. It presented testimony from a statistician who opined that when guns are fired in self-defense, the average number of bullets used is 2.2. Benitez pokes holes in that estimate, which is based on opaque analyzes of self-defense incidents identified by the National Rifle Association or reported by the press. Benitez questions the cut-off dates used in these analyses, noting that crucial information was often missing from the accounts, and suggesting that the statistician’s method of filling these gaps biased the estimate downward. But even if the estimate is accepted at face value, he says, research data on the use of defensive weapons suggests that incidents requiring more than 10 shots occur “between 1,500 and 9,000 times” per year.
Polling data also casts doubt on California’s claim that magazines with a capacity of more than ten rounds are not covered by the Second Amendment. “Magazines with more than ten rounds may be the most used asset in America,” Benitez wrote. “These larger magazines number over a hundred million.” A 2021 survey of gun owners found that nearly half owned magazines exceeding the California limit and on average owned about a half-dozen magazines, suggesting the current total is in the hundreds of millions. “For pistols, the most popular sizes range up to 17 rounds,” Benitez notes. “The most popular size for rifles is 30 rounds.”
In other words, the magazines that California deems unacceptable are clearly “in general use” for “lawful purposes,” which matches the Supreme Court’s definition of the “weapons” to which Americans are presumptively entitled. California has nonetheless determined that such magazines are “not necessary or even appropriate for private self-defense.” Under the Second Amendment, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, Benitez concludes, this is not the state’s call.