California Judge Upholds “Assault Weapons” Ban. Now What?

By Cam Edwards

A federal judge in California’s ruled that the state’s convoluted ban on “assault weapons” doesn’t infringe on the rights of residents in the state, in a decision that is almost certainly headed for appeal to the 9th Circuit. U.S. District Judge Josephine Stanton of the Central District of California has authored an opinion that manages to display both an anti-gun bias and an ignorance of how semi-automatic firearms work.

Stanton upheld the California gun control law by accepting the argument of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra that the semi-automatic firearms banned under California law “may be banned because they are, like the M-16, ‘weapons that are most useful in military service.” Becerra also stated that semi-automatic rifles are “not in common use for lawful purposes like self-defense.” Judge Stanton agreed with the first half of Becerra’s argument, and that was enough for her.

Because the Court concludes that semiautomatic assault rifles are essentially indistinguishable from M-16s, which Heller noted could be banned pursuant to longstanding prohibitions on dangerous and usual weapons, the Court need not reach the question of whether semiautomatic rifles are excluded from the Second Amendment because they are not in common use for lawful purposes like …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms