On Thursday, October 19, 2023, Federal Judge Roger T. Benitez issued a ruling in Miller v. Bonta. The case challenged California’s so-called “Assault Weapons” ban. Judge Benitez ruled the law was unconstitutional but stayed the ruling for 10 days to allow the State to appeal. This is a significant ruling as it struck down the law utilizing the latest U.S. Supreme Court tests brought in by New York State Rifle & Pistol Association (NYSRPA) v. Bruen.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Judge Benitez has ruled on the Miller v. Bonita. He ruled the so-called “Assault Weapons” ban unconstitutional on June 4, 2021. It has been in appeals since that time and returned to him for reconsideration in light of NYSRPA v. Bruen.
The 79-page ruling is well written and concise, as all of Judge Benitez’s rulings have been. It precisely details how California’s laws do not past the text, history, and tradition test, nor any of the previous Supreme Court’s Second Amendment tests. He also refutes, at times brutally, some of the State’s experts, testimony, and evidence.
The full ruling is linked below, and I encourage you to take the time to read it so you will understand not only the ruling, but what ‘logic’ the State of California is using against you.
Here are a few significant quotes from the ruling:
The California legislature, at a time in the past when the lower courts did not recognize an individual’s right to keep firearms and in a state that has no constitutional analogue to the Second Amendment, balanced that interest above and against its law-abiding citizens who wanted these firearms for self-defense.
However, among the American tradition of firearm ownership, there is nothing like California’s prohibition on rifles, shotguns, and handguns based on their looks or attributes. Here, the “assault weapon” prohibition has no historical pedigree and it is extreme.
The State says criminals already have and favor using guns described as “assault weapons.” Rather than being outgunned, many citizens want these same firearms as a defense against criminal attacks. Americans today own 24.4 million modern rifles (i.e., AR-15 platform and AK-47 platform rifles), according to the State’s expert. Of the AR-15 rifle owners surveyed, 61% said one reason they acquired their gun is for home defense. Consequently, while criminals already have these modern semiautomatics, the State prohibits its citizens from buying and possessing the same guns for self-defense. At the same time these firearms are commonly possessed by law-abiding gun owners elsewhere across the country. Guns for self-defense are needed a lot because crime happens a lot. A recent large-scale survey estimates that guns are needed defensively approximately 1,670,000 times a year.
Another report, originally commissioned and long cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there are between 500,000 and 3,000,000 defensive gun uses in the United States each year. That is a lot of situations where Jane Doe needs a firearm to defend herself and her family. Trial testimony from hoodlums is not needed to prove that a homeowner brandishing an AR-15 can be a strong deterrent to criminal attackers. But when brandishing does not stop an attack, Jane needs an effective defense. That is where an AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle can come to the rescue. And although this Court focuses its analysis on rifles, California’s ban also includes such common weapons as semiautomatic shotguns with removable magazines and semiautomatic handguns with threaded barrels.
End quotes
As expected, the State of California immediately appealed the ruling to the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals where it is certain to be indefinitely stayed pending rehearing and its inevitable and expected overturn. It remains to be seen if the Ninth Circuit will once again violate its own rules as it did with the appeal of recent ruling in Duncan v. Bonta, the ban on so-called “large capacity magazines”, and have the same en banc panel that heard it previously rule on the stay.
Judge Benitz’s rational in this case is logical, reasonable, and above all, is legally sound. When viewed through the lens of the Constitution, Second Amendment, and the relevant U.S. Supreme Court Second Amendment rulings, there is no other logical conclusion than what he came to. The problem is activists judges who are more interested in social agenda and political affiliations warping the definitions of these same elements to support a completely different conclusion. That is the case’s next hurdle in the Nutty Ninth.
One last quote from the ruling:
Punishing every good citizen because bad ones misuse a gun offends the Constitution. A state supreme court in 1878 said it succinctly: “If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege.”
Bob
https://saf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/MIller-Decision-2023.pdf
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California’s Assault Weapon Ban Ruled Unconstitutional
