California Gun Mag Ban Shut Down
By Brian Doherty. August 14, 2020
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 panel decision, today upheld a lower court's shutting down of California's ban on gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, so-called "large capacity magazines" (LCMs).
The decision in the case of Duncan v. Becerra upheld a district court decision for summary judgment against the state of California from March 2019. The law barring LCMs as currently amended was a result of Proposition 63 in 2016.
Because of this lawsuit, initially filed just before the newest iteration of the LCM ban went into effect, the state has been legally enjoined from actually enforcing it. Now the 9th Circuit says it should never be able to. The law, if applied, would have demanded confiscation or destruction of all the tremendous number of previously legal LCMs in Californians' hands.
The District Court had decided there was "no genuine dispute of material fact that section 32310 violates the Second and Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and ordered summary judgment for the [LCM] Owners" who were suing the state. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today agrees with that conclusion.
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"Despite not being guns, the panel finds that magazines are an essential element of a gun serving its self-defense function. 'Firearms or magazines holding more than ten rounds have been in existence — and owned by American citizens — for centuries. Firearms with greater than ten round capacities existed even before our nation's founding, and the common use of LCMs for self-defense is apparent in our shared national history,'"
