Just in case gun owners needed another reason to back Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court or to get energized ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey gave us one. On September 28, District Judge Peter G. Sheridan denied[1] a motion for a preliminary injunction that would have enjoined enforcement of New Jersey’s 10-round magazine capacity limit.
Back on June 13, New Jersey’s anti-gun Governor Phil Murphy signed A2761[2] into law. The legislation altered the state definition of “large capacity ammunition magazine”from magazines that can accept more than 15 rounds down to those that can accept more than 10. Owners of the newly prohibited magazines are required to forfeit possession of their property within 180 days, or to permanently modify their magazines to accept no more than 10 rounds.
Shortly after A2761 was signed, NRA-ILA announced[3] that it was joining with the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs[4] to challenge the new law. At the time, NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox noted, “Magazine bans do not deter criminals or improve public safety. Instead, they irrationally burden the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”This is in line with a Department of Justice-funded study of the 1994 federal semiautomatic ban, which also restricted magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. The study noted that “[s]hould it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”
In his decision, Sheridan conceded that magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds are in “common use”and thus entitled to Second Amendment protection. However, Sheridan then proceeded, as other courts have done, to apply an infinitely malleable
