Federal Judge Rules California’s “Assault Weapon” Ban Unconstitutional

In a searing 79-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez on Thursday struck down California’s ban on so-called “assault weapons,” handing a long-sought victory to gun rights organizations which have been fighting the ban for years.

The ruling comes in a case known as Miller v. Bonta, which was brought by the Second Amendment Foundation and several other groups and individuals.

“Americans have an individual right to keep and bear firearms,” Judge Benitez wrote. “The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution ‘guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.’ Whether citizens ever fire or need to fire their weapons, is not important. This guarantee is fully binding on the States and limits their ability to devise solutions to social problems. And the guarantee protects ‘the possession of weapons that are ‘in common use,’ or arms that are ‘typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.’ These are the decisions this Court is bound to apply.”

Judge Benitez’s ruling will almost certainly be appealed to the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco, but for the moment, SAF and its partners are celebrating a victory.

There is no small irony that Benitez’ ruling comes only a couple of weeks following the passing of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who had pushed to ban semiautomatic rifles nationwide during her decades on Capitol Hill.

“We’ve known all along the state ban could not hold up under constitutional scrutiny,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb in a statement to the press, “and we were encouraged by last year’s Supreme Court ruling in the Bruen case, which rejected the notion of ‘interest balancing’ when it comes to Second Amendment challenges.”

The ruling was not unexpected in the wake of several previous Second Amendment cases decided by Judge Benitez. However, SAF and its partners have been waiting for this decision for several months. Additional plaintiffs are the Firearms Policy Coalition, San Diego County Gun Owners Political Action Committee, California Gun Rights Foundation, and four private citizens.

In granting the long-sought permanent injunction against enforcement of the law, Judge Benitez has stayed it for ten days, allowing time for California to appeal to the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

“The California legislature,” Judge Benitez wrote, “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.

“That was then,” he continued. “Today, the Supreme Court has very clearly ended modern interest balancing when it comes to the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment, the Court said, ‘is the very product of an interest balancing by the people and it surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms for self-defense.’ It is ‘this balance—struck by the traditions of the American people—that demands our unqualified deference.’ The American tradition is rich and deep in protecting a citizen’s enduring right to keep and bear common arms like rifles, shotguns, and pistols. 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.”

Elsewhere in his ruling, the judge points to data reinforcing the fact that the banned firearms are “in common use” around the country.

“Americans today own 24.4 million modern rifles (i.e., AR-15 platform and AK-47 platform rifles), according to the State’s expert,” Judge Benitez noted. “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.”

Interestingly, early in his ruling, the judge refers to several incidents involving the use of AR-15 type rifles for justifiable self-defense.

“We hear constantly about mass shootings for days and weeks and on anniversaries,” Benitez observes. “But how often do we celebrate the saving of the life of Jane Doe because she was able to use a semi-automatic weapon to defend herself and her family from attackers? Are the lives of Jane, John, and Junior Doe worth any less than others? Are they less important?”

And then, the judge throws water on an oft-and-erroneously-used argument from the gun prohibition lobby about eliminating “weapons of war” from civilian society.

“The unalienable right to have firearms for self-defense existed before the Bill of Rights and today remains the central protection of the Second Amendment,” Judge Benitez notes. “It is a right that was recognized in English common law and in the American colonies. There is a corollary right, perhaps important in the future and unquestioned at the time of the founding, to have firearms useful to bring to militia service. United States v. Miller held that sawed-off shotguns were not protected because there was no evidence that they were useful for military purposes. The obvious corollary was that weapons that could be useful for military purposes would be protected by the Second Amendment. It would be a mistake to think Heller and Miller are inconsistent.

“The State argues,” he adds, “and some courts have reasoned, that modern semiautomatic rifles are ‘most useful in military service’ and therefore, can be banned. The Supreme Court said no such thing.”

Gottlieb told Ammoland News this ruling is undoubtedly going to bring more pressure on the Supreme Court to take a case challenging the constitutionality of “assault weapon” bans. There are other cases already in the que doing just that, including a SAF case challenging the ban in Maryland. How soon this may happen is anyone’s guess, but for those who have pushed and passed such bans, it appears a reckoning is coming.

Hon. Roger T. Benitez Rulin… by AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.