Posts Tagged ‘Roger Benitez’

Federal Judges Strikes Down California Background Checks For Ammo

Thursday, February 1st, 2024

Another Second Amendment win, this time in the People’s Republic of California.

A San Diego federal judge on Wednesday again struck down a state law that required background checks for nearly all purchases of firearm ammunition and barred California residents from bringing home ammunition that they purchased out of state.

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez ruled that such restrictions violate the Second Amendment. He also ruled that the portion of the law restricting out-of-state purchases violated the dormant Commerce Clause and is preempted by federal law regulating interstate transportation of firearms.

Benitez had previously struck down the same law in April 2020, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the law just days later while the government appealed the ruling. Before the 9th Circuit could rule on that appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in a New York gun case that upended Second Amendment case law.

After the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, the 9th Circuit sent the case back to Benitez to be relitigated under that new framework, which holds that modern gun laws must be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Benitez found that the “ammunition background checks laws have no historical pedigree and operate in such a way that they violate the Second Amendment right of citizens to keep and bear arms.” He issued an immediate injunction barring the state from enforcing the law.

The California Rifle & Pistol Association, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement that Wednesday’s ruling represents “continued progress in rolling back decades of attacks on the rights of lawful gun owners.”

Chuck Michel, president and general counsel of the group, said the ruling showed, once again, that the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision has greatly impacted how courts must analyze “these absurdly restrictive laws.”

Snip.

“In the end, the State has failed to carry its burden to demonstrate that the ammunition background check laws ‘are consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,’ as required by Bruen,” the judge wrote. “… A sweeping background check requirement imposed every time a citizen needs to buy ammunition is an outlier that our ancestors would have never accepted for a citizen.”

He also wrote that state data showed too many people seeking to lawfully purchase ammunition were being rejected because of flaws in the system. He said that according to state statistics, when the system was first implemented in 2019, the rejection rate was 16 percent. That has since fallen to 11 percent, “but is still too high,” he wrote.

When a circuit court as notoriously liberal feels compelled to send cases back to lower court in light of Bruen, the the Second Amendment is winning.

On the downside, the Democratic Party in general, and California Democrats in particular, have proven that no amount of rulings will prevent them from pursuing the goal of complete disarmament of law-abiding citizens.

Expect California Democrats to respond by passing a whole slew of gun-grabbing legislation that continues to ignore the clear guidelines of Bruen.

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Posted in Democrats, Guns, Regulation | 6 Comments »

Washington State vs. Gator’s Guns

Sunday, November 19th, 2023

I don’t usually cover state level gun lawsuits (and Texas is pro-Second Amendment enough that they aren’t necessary here), but Washington State vs. Gator’s Guns is interesting, in that Washington State’s unconstitutional “high” (i.e. standard) capacity magazine ban has a good chance of being thrown out as unconstitutional.

  • Unlike two other cases challenging the law, Washington state’s Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson is the one suing Gator’s Guns. That means the case will be tried in rural Cowlitz County, as Ferguson can’t get the venue moved to liberal, urban Thurston County.
  • Pete Serrano of the Silent Majority Foundation: “We’ve had several hearings before judge [Gary] Basher, the presiding judge in this jurisdiction, who said ‘I want to know whether or not this ban is constitutional. Everything else can come in on the back end.'”
  • The AG’s playbook on cases in Kings and Pierce County was radically different. Serrano: “The Attorney General came in hard, fast, hit the person, and either tried to extract the settlement agreement or punish them immediately and had a favorable venue.”
  • Usually scheduling order hearings are uneventful things that can be done by Zoom. Not this one. Serrano: “Here the judge ordered us into the court in person on Monday and said ‘Listen, you guys can’t get the scheduling together because we’re pushing to have this thing done and heard by the end of 2023.'” The AG is trying to drag things out well into 2024.
  • The constitutional issues in the case have been covered before. Serrano: “We’ve briefed it in Brumback [vs. Ferguson], we’ve seen it briefed in other cases throughout the state and.”
  • “You have [U.S. District] Judge [Roger] Benitez’s opinion on the same thing in California.”
  • Washington Gun Law President William Kirk: “Let’s also remember that a lot of the case law that we’re talking about on the assault weapon bans, is also similar case law that would be cited in a magazine ban case as well.” I suspect this is a reference to Bruen. One thing I haven’t seen in this video or the snippets on this case online is how Bruen has changed the burden of proof on government regulation of citizen firearms.
  • Serrano: “There’s nothing really original here.”
  • Kirk: “Did the Attorney General bite off a little more than they could chew on this one?”
  • Serrano: “Oh absolutely…It was like here’s a gift from God. Or, you know definitely not God, but from Bob Ferguson. It’s [a gift] from Satan…He’s going to go into a rural small conservative county and sue someone who allegedly sold over a thousand of these magazines.”
  • In 12 years, Cowlitz County has gone from mild blue to deep red.

    • This is the sort of magazine ban I can see being struck down even before Bruen. In light of the the post-Bruen environment, it’s hard to believe it won’t get struck down.

    Only stubborn Democratic dedication to complete civilian disarmament keeps the Bob Fergusons of the world trying to impose gun control methods that have already been found unconstitutional.

    Here’s the Silent Majority Foundation page on the case.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Regulation | 3 Comments »

    California’s Gun Grabbers Screw Themselves

    Wednesday, July 20th, 2022

    In an attempt to subvert the Supreme Court’s clear directions in the Bruen decision, California’s gun grabbing Democrats have actually made their case weaker through their own arguments. Armed Scholar Anthony Miranda:

    Some takeaways:

  • “The state of California just backed themselves into a major corner in the California ‘assault weapons’ ban case, Miller v Bonta.”
  • California “requested that the Ninth Circuit vacate Judge [Roger] Benitez’s ruling and remand the case back down to him for him to have to completely rehear the case all over again from square one. This was the State of California’s effort to stall this case out as long as possible because that’s really one of the only cards they have left.”
  • “[Firearms Policy Coalition] just obliterated all the State of California’s arguments in their reply, and they completely trapped the State of California with their own words.”
  • In short, California was still trying to argue that the two-step approach to exercising Second Amendment would be upheld on appeal despite the fact that the Supreme Court had explicitly bitch-slapped the two-step approach into oblivion.
  • California also falsely announced that in striking down the two-step approach, the Supreme Court had created a new legal framework, when in fact they had merely explicitly affirmed the existing framework of Heller.
  • The district court “found that California’s ban on modern firearms was not one of the presumptively lawful measures that was identified in Heller, and also found that the ban on modern firearms has no historical pedigree.”
  • To whit: “Prior to the 1990s, there was no national history of banning weapons because they were equipped with features like pistol grips, collapsible stocks, flash hiders, flare launchers or barrel shrouds.”
  • “Benitez ultimately found that those arguments were exactly the type that the Supreme Court and Heller broadly caution courts against when deciding whether analogous regulations were long-standing. Something that was put in place or didn’t pop up until the 1930s or the 1940s or 50s doesn’t actually align with the historical pedigree that the supreme
    court commands that courts must look at.”

  • California “acts as if Judge Benitez did not consider text as informed by history, when in fact he actually did in his original ruling. Also, all the harm California claims that will be suffered if the state is lifted has also been found 100% illegitimate prior by Benitez himself.”

    • It would be nice if the citizens of California could enjoy the Second Amendment rights enjoyed by American citizens in the overwhelming majority of the other 49 states…

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    Posted in Democrats, Supreme Court, video | 15 Comments »

    California Assault Weapons Ban Struck Down

    Saturday, June 5th, 2021

    This is a welcome development:

    A federal judge ruled Friday that California’s “assault weapons” ban is unconstitutional.

    The court found the state’s ban on the sale of AR-15s and other popular rifles violated the Second Amendment. Judge Roger Benitez [of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California] ruled the guns targeted by California are in common use. He said the state ran afoul of the Constitution in restricting access to them.

    “This case is not about extraordinary weapons lying at the outer limits of Second Amendment protection,” Benitez wrote. “The banned ‘assault weapons’ are not bazookas, howitzers, or machineguns. Those arms are dangerous and solely useful for military purposes. Instead, the firearms deemed ‘assault weapons’ are fairly ordinary, popular, modern rifles.

    “This is an average case about average guns used in average ways for average purposes.”

    California’s ban is one of the oldest and most aggressive in the country. It was instituted in 1989 but has been expanded multiple times in the decades since. The state added more guns and features to the ban. Eventually, it banned the possession of unregistered “assault weapons” before the latest iteration of the ban was challenged by gun-rights groups in federal court.

    Benitez said the AR-15’s versatility made it widely popular in the United States, and that popularity is part of what gives it protection under the Second Amendment. He compared the modular firearm to a “Swiss Army Knife” and noted its use for home defense and civil defense.

    “Good for both home and battle, the AR-15 is the kind of versatile gun that lies at the intersection of the kinds of firearms protected under District of Columbia v. Heller and United States v. Miller,” he said. “Yet, the State of California makes it a crime to have an AR15 type rifle. Therefore, this Court declares the California statutes to be unconstitutional.”

    1989 means the ban even predates the cosmetic Clinton-era “assault weapon” ban intended to ban ARs, AKs, and most modern sporting rifles. Indeed, the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989 was the model the Clinton Administration used for their own ban, including the dreaded barrel shroud. Roberti-Roos is also the source of California’s infamous ban on detachable magazines and those holding more than 10 rounds.

    For those that say the Republican Party has been completely useless at achieving conservative objectives, I would point to the appointment of strong Federalist Society and pro-Second Amendment judges as one of many counter examples. Without Reagan and Bush41, we don’t get Scalia and Thomas, and without them we don’t get Heller. Indeed, without originalist judges, the Second Amendment would probably have been legislated away entirely by now…

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    Posted in Guns, Regulation | 15 Comments »