California high-capacity ammunition ban unconstitutional, judge rules

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — High-capacity gun magazines will remain legal in California under a ruling by a federal judge who cited home invasions where a woman used the extra bullets in her weapon to kill an attacker while in two other cases women without additional ammunition ran out of bullets. “Individual liberty and freedom are not outmoded concepts,” San Diego-based U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez[1] wrote Friday as he declared unconstitutional the law that would have banned possessing any magazines holding more than 10 bullets. California law has prohibited buying or selling such magazines since 2000, but those who had them before then were allowed to keep them. In 2016, the Legislature and voters approved a law removing that provision. The California arm of the National Rifle Association sued and Benitez[2] sided with the group’s argument that banning the magazines infringes on the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Benitez[3] had temporarily blocked the law from taking effect with a 2017 ruling. Chuck Michel, an attorney for the NRA and the California Rifle & Pistol Association, said the judge’s latest ruling may go much farther by striking down the entire ban, allowing individuals to legally acquire high-capacity magazines for the first time in nearly two decades. “We’re still digesting the opinion but it appears to us that he struck down both the latest ban on possessing by those who are grandfathered in, but also said that everyone has a right to acquire one,” Michel said. Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement that his office is “committed to defending California’s common sense gun laws” and is reviewing the decision and evaluating its next steps. The goal of the California law is to deter mass-shootings, with Becerra previously listing as an example the terrorist assault that killed 14 and injured

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