I got through most of it. Some of the quotes that I liked.
Fortunately, the Second Amendment protects a person’s right to keep and bear firearms. The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” U.S. Const. amend. II. “As interpreted in recent years by the Supreme Court, the Second Amendment protects ‘the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.’”
“[O]ur central holding in Heller [is] that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home.” McDonald v. City of Chicago
“An unconstitutional statute adopted by a dozen jurisdictions is no less unconstitutional by virtue of its popularity.” Silveira, 312 at 1091.
But an individual victim gets little, if any, media attention, and the attention he or she gets is local and short-lived. For example, who has heard about the home invasion attack on Melinda Herman and her twin nine-year old daughters in Georgia only one month after the Sandy Hook incident?15 Who has heard of the attacks on Ms. Zhu Chen or Ms. Gonzalez and her husband?16 Are the lives of these victims worth any less than those lost in a mass shooting? Would their deaths be any less tragic? Unless there are a lot of individual victims together, the tragedy goes largely unnoticed.
That is why mass shootings can seem to be a common problem, but in fact, are exceedingly rare. At the same time robberies, rapes, and murders of individuals are common, but draw little public notice. As in the year 2017, in 2016 there were numerous robberies, rapes, and murders of individuals in California and no mass shootings. Nevertheless, a gubernatorial candidate [Gavin Newson] was successful in sponsoring a statewide ballot measure (Proposition 63). Californians approved the proposition and added criminalization and dispossession elements to existing law prohibiting a citizen from acquiring and keeping a firearm magazine that is able to hold more than 10 rounds. The State now defends the prohibition on magazines, asserting that mass shootings are an urgent problem and that restricting the size of magazines a citizen may possess is part of the solution. Perhaps it is part of the solution.
According to the U.S. Supreme Court’s reasoning, acquiring, possessing, or storing a commonly-owned 15-round magazine at home for self-defense is protected at the core of the Second Amendment. Possessing a loaded 100-round rifle and magazine in a crowded public area may not be.
Today, self-protection is most important. In the future, the common defense may once again be most important. Constitutional rights stand through time holding fast through the ebb and flow of current controversy. Needing a solution to a current law enforcement difficulty cannot be justification for ignoring the Bill of Rights as bad policy. Bad political ideas cannot be stopped by criminalizing bad political speech. Crime waves cannot be broken with warrantless searches and unreasonable seizures. Neither can the government response to a few mad men with guns and ammunition be a law that turns millions of responsible, law-abiding people trying to protect themselves into criminals. Yet, this is the effect of California’s large-capacity magazine law.
The Attorney General argues, even so, that it is permissible to ban common handguns with common magazines holding more than 10 rounds because the possession of firearms with other smaller magazines is allowed.
To the extent that magazines holding more than 10 rounds may be less common within California, it would likely be the result of the State long criminalizing the buying, selling, importing, and manufacturing of these magazines. Saying that large capacity magazines are uncommon because they have been banned for so long is something of a tautology. It cannot be used as constitutional support for further banning.
Certainly, a gun when abused is lethal. A gun holding more than 10 rounds is lethal to more people than a gun holding less than 10 rounds, but it is not constitutionally decisive. Nothing in the Second Amendment makes lethality a factor to consider because a gun’s lethality, or dangerousness, is assumed. The Second Amendment does not exist to protect the right to bear down pillows and foam baseball bats. It protects guns and every gun is dangerous. “If Heller tells us anything, it is that firearms cannot be categorically prohibited just because they are dangerous.”
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that:
1. Defendant Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and his officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and those persons in active concert or participation with him, and those duly sworn state peace officers and federal law enforcement officers who gain knowledge of this injunction order, or know of the existence of this injunction order, are enjoined from enforcing California Penal Code section 32310.
2. Defendant Becerra shall provide, by personal service or otherwise, actual noticeof this order to all law enforcement personnel who are responsible for implementing or enforcing the enjoined statute. The government shall file a declaration establishing proof of such notice.
DATED: March 29, 2019
Nice to see but it won't last, Becerra is probably now beating on the doors of the 9th Circuit. The 9th will stay the injunction until it can hold a hearing and it will likely overturn it.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan