Federal Judge Stays California Confiscation of Magazines Holding More than 10 Rounds

By Jim Campbell

August 31, 2017

This confiscation, even beyond Second Amendment concerns, amounts to an unconstitutional taking of personal property.

I can’t believe I missed this one.

I may have been cleaning my .50 cal machines or waxing my M1-A-Abrahams tank.

If an intruder can get past my claymore mines, he or they will be greeted by this, with the cannon pointing through the front door.

This confiscation, even beyond Second Amendment concerns, amounts to an unconstitutional taking of personal property.

 

If they still had them after July 1, they’d be guilty of “a misdemeanor punishable by a fine not to exceed one hundred dollars ($100) per large-capacity magazine, by imprisonment in a county jail not to exceed one year, or by both that fine and imprisonment.”

 

 

(Active or former law enforcement officers, as is so often the case, would be exempt from the law.)

Sorry about that anti-gunners, your wishes have just been benched.

Last month, in the case of Duncan v. Becerra, U.S. District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez granted a preliminary injunction on the part of the people and organizations suing to overturn the law.

For now, California is legally bound not to enforce the expanded ban, awaiting a final resolution of the lawsuit.

“Sorry Gavin, Your Civilian Disarmament Agenda Does Not Trump the Second Amendment.”

It’s a perspective many jurists sadly lack.

No, it lack of perspective by anti-Second Amendments like Gavin Newsome who will throw up anything against the wall to see if it to further their quest for higher office. 

Gavin Newsome

The ruling is welcome news for gun owners who are under siege from shrewd California lawmakers with an extreme “progressive” agenda.

Last year California politicians were faced with a threat from Gavin Newsom’s self-promoting Prop 63 as he vied to seize the mantle of the “King-of-Gun-Control” from Senator Kevin DeLeon so he could build his name recognition in his gubernatorial campaign.

So they raced to pass a number of gun bans that have collectively become known as “Gunmageddon.”

Both Prop 63 and Gunmaggedon included a ban on the possession of standard capacity magazines that can hold more than ten rounds.

Although acquisition and importation of the magazines had been banned since 2000, under the new laws gun owners were compelled to “dispossess” themselves of the magazines by July 1.

It’s government confiscation with a mustache.

But by issuing the preliminary injunction, Judge Benitez instead preserved the status quo while the constitutionality of the ban is fully litigated in court, where plaintiffs are seeking to eventually have a permanent injunction issued.

Unsurprisingly Newsom, Prop 63’s main proponent, was unhappy with the decision.

As he stated to Fox News, “large-capacity magazines enable murderers to unleash dozens of rounds without having to stop and reload.”

But to quote the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, “the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.”

And despite Prop 63’s purported public safety interests, those interests “may not eviscerate the Second Amendment,” as Judge Benitez put it.

Even so, Newsom’s claim that banning these magazines would somehow save lives is a pure fallacy.

To support this “policy choice,” attorneys for the government offered a number of “studies” and “expert” testimonies trying to prop up that claim.

But unlike some courts that have almost blindly accept the government’s claims without scrutinizing the evidence, Judge Benitez, nominated by President George W. Bush took a close look. (Source)

He found that state’s evidence was inconclusive at best.

One of those “experts” admitted that “it is not clear how often the ability to fire more than 10 shots without reloading, affects the outcomes of gun attacks.”

Another so-called expert cited nothing more than news articles in concluding that “the bans on large capacity magazines can help save lives by forcing mass shooters to pause and reload ammunition.”

To support this “policy choice,” attorneys for the government offered a number of “studies” and “expert” testimonies trying to prop up that claim.

But unlike some courts that have almost blindly accept the government’s claims without scrutinizing the evidence, Judge Benitez took a close look.

He found that state’s evidence was inconclusive at best.

 

Someone should remind these fools that it takes but one round and a well-trained shooter to kill.

This law is for the rest of California’s population, who may need far more rounds to get the job done, after being awakened from a sound sleep, and then searching for their glasses.

Perhaps one of the most effective program the military ran while in Vietnam. (Source)

Operation Chieu Hoi offered the opportunity to quit fighting, come to Chie Hoi centers converting many to the status of “Kit Carson, Scouts.”

This was one of our primary operations, to get the leaflets ready and dropped.

I also participated initially in the cover-up of Lt. Calley’s Mi Lai incident, before the lid blew off.

Why would I do this then and not now, because “The government, would never lie to us.” 🙂

Oh yes and then their was the incident at the “Dugway Proving Grounds, A.K.A., “Skull Valley where thousand of sheep were killed when the Army, testing nerve gas forgot to tak in account the shift in the wind.

Thousands of sheep died, the U.S. has never admitted culpability and no rancher has been repaid for the loss of his sheep.

Remember this, The U.S. Government would never lie to us.

I didn’t go to Vietnam, I did this from the comfy confines of the Defense Information School, Fort Benjamin Harrison, AKA “Uncle Ben’s rest home.

If CA voters had a chance of finding a clue, even after they were  carpet bombed bombed with them, now would be time to pull a Hillary on him. (Source)

We have suffered through Feinstein we don’t need another asshole running our lives in CA.

See the entire article below.

 

Ammoland

Brian Doherty

Jul. 3, 2017

That opinion, in Duncan v. Becerra, shows what’s possible when a federal judge treats the right to keep and bear arms with the respect deserved by all provisions within the Bill of Rights.

Thanks to the injunction issued by Judge Benitez, that is no longer the case.

His order prevents enforcement of the ban on possession and the requirement that those in possession rid themselves of their magazines, pending further proceedings in the case.

The order left intact, however, the bans on manufacturing, sale, or import. 

The case is challenging the ban enacted last fall by Proposition 63 on so-called “large capacity magazines” (i.e., most ammunition feeding devices “with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds”). 

California’s law went beyond similar laws in other anti-gun states by prohibiting not only the manufacturing, sale, or importation of such magazines but also their possession, including by those who had lawfully obtained them before the ban’s effective date of July 1.

As Judge Roger T. Benitez put it in his order, “On July 1, 2017, any previously law-abiding person in California who still possesses a firearm magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds will begin their new life of crime.”

Judge Benitez held that standard capacity magazines like those affected by the ban are “arms” within the meaning of the Second Amendment.  He further ruled that the law burdens the “core” Second Amendment right of possessing an arm commonly held by law-abiding citizens for

He further ruled that the law burdens the “core” Second Amendment right of possessing an arm commonly held by law-abiding citizens for defense of home, self, and state.

The burden, he wrote, was “more than slight” and the ban was neither presumptively legal nor of long-standing pedigree.

And even if the ban were subject to the more forgiving brand of “intermediate scrutiny” under which many gun control laws have been upheld, he found it would not be a reasonable fit with the state’s asserted purpose of public safety because it is squarely aimed at law-abiding persons.

Judge Benitez had some unusually sharp characterizations of California’s gun control laws.

“The language used, the internally referenced provisions, the interplay among them, and the plethora of other gun regulations, have made the State’s magazine laws difficult to understand for all but the most learned experts,” he stated.

“Too much complexity fails to give fair notice and violates due process,” he continued, noting that even the attorney for the State of California could not describe all of the magazine ban’s intricacies during the hearing.

“Who could blame her?” he asked rhetorically.

“The California matrix of gun control laws is among the harshest in the nation and are filled with criminal law traps for people of common intelligence who desire to obey the law.”

Judge Benitez also assailed the creeping incrementalism that retroactively seeks to punish facially harmless behavior by upstanding people who are acting in good faith.

“Constitutional rights would become meaningless if states could obliterate them by enacting incrementally more burdensome restrictions while arguing that a reviewing court must evaluate each restriction by itself when determining constitutionality,” he wrote.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this was exactly the complaint that the NRA and others had raised with the Ninth Circuit’s opinion the Supreme Court had earlier in the week declined to review.

By focusing narrowly on the question of whether the Second Amendment was specifically meant to protect concealed carry, the Ninth Circuit had ignored the fact that California has foreclosed every option to lawfully bear arms for self-defense in public.

Judge Benitez framed the questions in Duncan case as whether a law-abiding, responsible citizen has “a right to defend his home from criminals using whatever common magazine size he or she judges best suits the situation” and “to keep and bear a common magazine useful for service in a militia.”

He opined that “a final decision on the merits is likely to answer both questions ‘yes’… .“

Thursday’s opinion represents a very encouraging development but unfortunately is not the last word in the case.

It remains to be seen if the state will appeal the injunction, and the court must still resolve the underlying claims.

Once that happens, further appeals are likely to follow.

Overall, however, the July’s events were a reminder of the critical role that federal judges play in the freedoms that Americans enjoy (or don’t enjoy).

And having a president who respects the Constitution when appointing those judges is a safeguard that no liberty-loving American can overestimate.

 

THE END