By Taylor Romine | CNN
A federal choose has overturned a decades-old California regulation banning assault weapons, calling the restriction “excessive” and unconstitutional.
US District Choose Roger T. Benitez dominated Thursday the ban impedes on residents’ Second Modification rights and has no historic precedent, as is required by a landmark Supreme Courtroom resolution final yr that modified the take a look at courts are to make use of when figuring out the constitutionality of firearms laws.
Benitez relied on the same argument when he struck down California’s ban on high-capacity magazines final month.
The state argued the regulation goals to stop mass shooters from getting access to assault weapons. However Benitez countered most of the banned firearms are additionally generally utilized by “law-abiding” residents for self-defense.
“California’s reply to the legal misuse of some is to disarm its many good residents. That knee-jerk response is constitutionally untenable, simply because it was 250 years in the past,” Benitez wrote in his resolution.
The regulation struck down by Benitez features a broad definition of assault weapons, which incorporates quite a lot of semi-automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns.
Gov. Gavin Newsom dismissed the choice as a “direct insult to each sufferer of a mass capturing and their households.”
“Californians’ elected representatives determined virtually 35 years in the past that weapons of struggle haven’t any place in our communities. As we speak, Choose Benitez determined that he is aware of higher, public security be damned,” Newsom stated in an announcement.
The choose stayed his injunction for 10 days with a purpose to give the state a possibility to enchantment.
California Lawyer Common Rob Bonta instantly filed a discover of enchantment, noting the ban remains to be in impact in the intervening time. He criticized the court docket’s resolution as “harmful and misguided.”
“Weapons of struggle haven’t any place on California’s streets,” Bonta stated in an announcement. “This has been state regulation in California for many years, and we’ll proceed to combat for our authority to maintain our residents protected from firearms that trigger mass casualties.”
John Dillon, an lawyer representing a few of the plaintiffs, stated in an announcement the choice is “constitutionally sound and addresses the various inadequacies of the State’s arguments and so-called justifications for this unconstitutional ban.”
The overturned statute is among the many slew of firearms restrictions opened as much as scrutiny by a Supreme Courtroom resolution final June which established a brand new normal for courts to research such legal guidelines.
Beneath the choice, firearm laws have to be “in line with this Nation’s historic custom” to adjust to Second Modification protections, that means fashionable gun legal guidelines have to be in line with how firearms have been regulated traditionally.
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