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2 New Court Decisions Are Quietly Eliminating Californians’ Second Amendment Rights
Two new federal court decisions highlight a harsh new reality: California has effectively repealed the Second Amendment inside its borders.
In the first case, decided yesterday, a district judge ruled against the National Rifle Association's state affiliate in a challenge to onerous new California rules targeting popular semi-automatic rifles. That 2016 law, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), is called the Assault Weapons Control Act.
"Even an outright ban on certain types of semiautomatic weapons does not substantially burden the Second Amendment right," wrote Judge Josephine Staton, a Barack Obama appointee in Santa Ana, California. Staton suggested that if semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 were outlawed, California gun owners "would be left with myriad options for self-defense—including the handgun, the 'quintessential' self-defense weapon per Heller." (Heller, is, of course, a reference to the Supreme Court's D.C. v. Heller case, which dealt with handguns.)
abdicated its responsibility by letting lower courts get away with it.
"If a lower court treated another right so cavalierly, I have little doubt that this Court would intervene," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a dissent from his colleagues' decision not to hear the Silvester v. Harris case after the 9th Circuit upheld another California anti-gun measure. "But as evidenced by our continued inaction in this area, the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this Court… The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court's constitutional orphan." (Justice Neil Gorsuch joined Thomas in a separate dissent last year that made a similar point.)
In the lawsuit decided yesterday, Rupp v. Becerra, the California Rifle and Pistol Association asked the court to rule that the 2016 Assault Weapons Control Act was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and the Constitution's due process and takings clauses. The California law makes it a crime to manufacture, sell, import or transfer hundreds of popular semi-automatic firearms with a pistol grip or adjustable telescoping stock—and the ban on transfers includes gifts between parents, grandparents, and children.
California gun owners who legally owned such a rifle before December 31, 2016 have only a few choices: register it as an "assault rifle" (which imposes strict new requirements), modify it, sell it, or store it out of state. Failing to register by July 2018 is a crime. (Any bets on how many firearms actually will be?)
Judge Staton's opinion upholding the 2016 law underscores how widespread—and overt—the judicial resistance to Heller has become. Some excerpts from her opinion: "The legislature is permitted to reform its gun control regime incrementally...It is beyond question that promoting public safety and reducing incidents of gun violence are legitimate government interests... restrictions on semi-automatic weapons bear a rational relationship to the objective of public safety..." Does anyone think that a California judge would be so deferential to the legislature when evaluating a law that, say, restricts the availability of abortions?
More at ....
2 New Court Decisions Are Quietly Eliminating Californians’ Second Amendment Rights
Two new federal court decisions highlight a harsh new reality: California has effectively repealed the Second Amendment inside its borders.
In the first case, decided yesterday, a district judge ruled against the National Rifle Association's state affiliate in a challenge to onerous new California rules targeting popular semi-automatic rifles. That 2016 law, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), is called the Assault Weapons Control Act.
"Even an outright ban on certain types of semiautomatic weapons does not substantially burden the Second Amendment right," wrote Judge Josephine Staton, a Barack Obama appointee in Santa Ana, California. Staton suggested that if semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 were outlawed, California gun owners "would be left with myriad options for self-defense—including the handgun, the 'quintessential' self-defense weapon per Heller." (Heller, is, of course, a reference to the Supreme Court's D.C. v. Heller case, which dealt with handguns.)
abdicated its responsibility by letting lower courts get away with it.
"If a lower court treated another right so cavalierly, I have little doubt that this Court would intervene," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a dissent from his colleagues' decision not to hear the Silvester v. Harris case after the 9th Circuit upheld another California anti-gun measure. "But as evidenced by our continued inaction in this area, the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this Court… The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court's constitutional orphan." (Justice Neil Gorsuch joined Thomas in a separate dissent last year that made a similar point.)
In the lawsuit decided yesterday, Rupp v. Becerra, the California Rifle and Pistol Association asked the court to rule that the 2016 Assault Weapons Control Act was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and the Constitution's due process and takings clauses. The California law makes it a crime to manufacture, sell, import or transfer hundreds of popular semi-automatic firearms with a pistol grip or adjustable telescoping stock—and the ban on transfers includes gifts between parents, grandparents, and children.
California gun owners who legally owned such a rifle before December 31, 2016 have only a few choices: register it as an "assault rifle" (which imposes strict new requirements), modify it, sell it, or store it out of state. Failing to register by July 2018 is a crime. (Any bets on how many firearms actually will be?)
Judge Staton's opinion upholding the 2016 law underscores how widespread—and overt—the judicial resistance to Heller has become. Some excerpts from her opinion: "The legislature is permitted to reform its gun control regime incrementally...It is beyond question that promoting public safety and reducing incidents of gun violence are legitimate government interests... restrictions on semi-automatic weapons bear a rational relationship to the objective of public safety..." Does anyone think that a California judge would be so deferential to the legislature when evaluating a law that, say, restricts the availability of abortions?
More at ....
2 New Court Decisions Are Quietly Eliminating Californians’ Second Amendment Rights
