A federal judge in Los Angeles has declared unconstitutional a state ban on “large capacity” magazines — defined as those containing more than 10 rounds of ammunition — because it violates Second Amendment protections.
“We begin at the end,” U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez wrote to open an opinion filed Sept. 22, noting the state’s law enacting a “ban and mandatory dispossession,” which was enacted in 2000 and amended in 2016, was subject to a preliminary injunction in 2017, a decision later affirmed on appeal. Then a 2019 summary judgment ruling found the ban unconstitutional, and that also was upheld on appeal.
However, Benitez said, the entire U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reheard the case and reversed. But in 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Ninth Circuit ruling and remanded the case. That court sent the issue back to Benitez with instructions to reconsider consistent with another 2022 U.S. Supreme Court opinion, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
“Based on the text, history and tradition of the Second Amendment, this law is clearly unconstitutional,” Benitez wrote. “There is no American tradition of limiting ammunition capacity and the 10-round limit has no historical pedigree and it is arbitrary and capricious. It is extreme. Our federal government and most states impose no limits and in the states where limits are imposed, there is no consensus.”
Benitez said magazines holding “more than 10 rounds are possibly the most commonly owned thing in America” with more than 100 million in circulation. For handguns, he said, popular sizes go up to 17 rounds, while for rifles the most popular is 30. He explained the order to reconsider in light of Bruen meant the state couldn’t just argue its regulation was important, it had to show “its extreme ban is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.”
The named defendant, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, has already filed an appeal. Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly denounced Benitez’s ruling.
Benitez cited both Bruen and the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court opinion, Washington, D.C., v. Heller and said Bonta’s legal strategy represented a “stealth return to the interest balancing test” each opinion rejected, which meant the actual position would deny Californians “the federal constitutional right to use common weapons of their own choosing for self-defense.”
He also noted the state argued larger capacity magazines don’t qualify as “arms” under the Second Amendment, but said the right to have guns for protection “implies a corresponding right to obtain the bullets necessary to use them” and, by extension, the magazines that hold those bullets and feed gun chambers.
Benitez pointed to a different state law, the Unsafe Handgun Act, which requires pistols to have a magazine-disconnect mechanism, preventing that type of gun from firing without the magazine inserted. Although rifles are not subject to the requirement, he continued, the law means semiautomatic handguns must have a magazine to work, which neutralizes arguments the ban only regulates accessories and not Second Amendment “arms.”
The state failed to convince Benitez large-capacity magazines aren’t commonly used for self defense, questioning the provenance of state data contending “defenders fire an average of only 2.2 shots in vases of confrontation.” He analogized guns purchased as protection — with or without large magazines — to seatbelts used in cars that never crash, reserve parachute canopies and even telephones waiting for a call.
“A person may happily live a lifetime without needing to fire their gun in self-defense,” Benitez wrote. “But that is not to say that such a person does not use their gun for self-defense when he or she keeps it under the bed with a hope and a prayer that it never has to be fired.”
Benitez also determined the state failed to show its regulation squares with any “historical statute or national tradition of firearm regulation so broad in its coverage or so far reaching in its effect.” He said the closest comparison was a New York City law regulating gunpowder storage enacted in 1784 following a 1776 fire that destroyed much of Manhattan and a second blaze in 1778. Other failed comparisons included laws regulating the concealed carry of weapons, including knives and other blades.
In fact, he said, the most useful comparison would’ve been a 1784 law requiring all citizens to keep at least 20 rounds of ammunition, which proves “California’s large capacity magazine ban is a diametrically opposed analogue.”
Bonta requested a stay while he pursued an appeal; Benitez granted a 10-day window. He also ordered Bonta to notify all law enforcement personnel who would be “responsible for implementing or enforcing the enjoined statute.”