CALIFORNIA’S “ASSAULT WEAPONS CONTROL ACT”
VIOLATES SECOND AMEDNMENT,
FEDERAL JUDGE RULES
by
Prof. Anthony Michael Sabino
California has a well-deserved reputation for being inhospitable to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. But a recent decision by a federal judge presiding in San Diego may compel lawmakers in the Golden State to reevaluate their historical reluctance to embrace the Second Amendment. And this ruling might even compel lawmakers and judges in other jurisdictions to accord greater respect to the Amendment’s liberty guarantee.
In Miller v. Bonta, ___ F.Supp.3d ___ (No. 19-cv-01537) (S.D. Cal.) (October 19, 2023), Senior District Judge Roger T. Benitez found that significant portions of California’s Assault Weapons Control Act were unconstitutional, for reason that the CAWCA purported to outlaw “fairly ordinary, popular, modern semi-automatic firearms…. [which are] ubiquitous as Ford F-series pickup trucks.”
Miller powerfully reminds us that in NYSRPA v. Bruen, 597 U.S. ___ (2022), the Supreme Court comprehensively jettisoned any of the “interest balancing” or “means-end scrutiny” tests previously utilized by some jurists to justify disregarding the text of the Second Amendment. Judge Benitez rightly proclaimed that the enshrinement of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms at the time of the Founding placed that freedom beyond “the hands of government,” while at the same time prohibited courts from considering whether the liberty so assured is “really worth insisting upon.” Accordingly, California’s lawmakers were barred from elevating the government’s interest in crime prevention above the rights of “law-abiding citizens who wanted these firearms for self-defense.” The Second Amendment’s guarantee, declared Judge Benitez, is fully binding upon the States, and delimits legislative power to restrict firearms ownership as a means of “devis[ing] solutions to social problems.”
Miller furthermore demonstrated unswerving fidelity to Bruen’s “history and tradition” test for scrutinizing modern firearms regulation. The court archly noted that the Golden State’s so-called “’assault weapon’ prohibition has no historical pedigree,” and was “extreme” in outlawing various classes of firearms merely for reason of their outward “looks or attributes.”
Judge Benitez also demolished any assertion that California’s Assault Weapons Control Act could pass constitutional muster because it did not outlaw all firearms. Invoking District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), Judge Benitez responded that “it is no constitutional answer for government to say that it is permissible to ban some guns as long as other guns are allowed.” Equating the Right to Keep and Bear Arms to First Amendment freedoms, Miller rightly concluded that “[i]t is not permissible for a state to ban some books simply because there are other books to read, or to close synagogues because churches and mosques are open.”
We acknowledge that Miller originated on the far-off West Coast. Nevertheless, its sound legal reasoning, and its adherence to Bruen, Heller, and other landmarks, should prove influential closer to home, specifically, in pending litigation challenging similar government embargoes against firearms long in widespread use. We can only hope that, among other things, judges and lawmakers across the land heed Judge Benitez’s declaration that “[g]uns for self-defense are needed a lot because crime happens a lot.”
FINAL Miller SD Cal ANJRPC v.1
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