9th Circuit Invalidates CA High Cap Mag Ban

3 judge panel with what appears to be one dissent. I predict CA will seek an en banc reconsideration, meaning they’ll ask the entire panel of 9th Circuit judges to reconsider the decision.

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:fireworks: :fireworks: :boom: :boom: :boom: :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face:

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I could be wrong, but I believe CA has sought reconsideration and eventually won before 9th Circuit en banc review in all of the 2A cases it originally lost.

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I believe the state will appeal. There is a chance of our side being successful this time though, because Trump has appointed 10 conservative judges to the 9th circuit since 2018. I’ve heard it’s about 50-50 now. Which 10 judges are chosen out of the pool of 24 will be the next question.

It likely will end up before the Supreme Court, hopefully after another conservative appointment there.

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Of course the state will appeal.
That’s how they funnel mega money to the lawyers who bribe them.
The people/taxpayers who sue the governor/government for illegal actions here get to pay the governor, ALL the people and lawyers working for the scumbags, AND then get to pay the settlement when the government loses.
Even when ya win ya LOSE.

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I agree that the state will seek reconsideration. They’ve done so every time they’ve lost to a 3-judge panel before the 9th. With the recent appointments, you may be right about them losing again before en banc reconsideration. I doubt it’ll end up before the Supreme Court anytime soon, though. Justice Roberts is now the swing vote, and the other four conservative pro-2A justices don’t have enough confidence in getting his 5th vote.

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Here’s an interesting take on the Roberts’ court and why they think the Court declined to hear 10 2nd Amendment cases this last go round:

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Going through the opinion, I feel a tension between what the judges feel should really happen, and the duty to observe stare decisis and follow circuit precedent.

We note that the district court’s “simple Heller test” conflicts with our court’s two-step inquiry framework for the Second Amendment. […] We are aware of the criticism that the two-step test “appears to be entirely made up” and that “its application has yielded analyses that are entirely inconsistent with Heller.” […] But we must follow this court’s precedent.

The Ninth Circuit two-step analysis asks how much rights are “burdened,” and then tells the court to choose either intermediate or strict scrutiny. Intermediate scrutiny usually means they let the law stand, while strict scrutiny lets almost nothing stand, unless it is the least-restrictive way to accomplish the state interest.

The passage I quoted sounds like they are begging the Supreme Court to strike down the two-step test.

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Here’s another gem, quite relevant under the current attempts to ban the pews:

The state could ban virtually anything if the test is merely whether something causes social ills when someone other than its lawful owner misuses it. Adopting such a radical position would give the government carte blanche to restrict the people’s liberties under the guise of protecting them.

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The dissenting judge is clearly the most experienced of the three. We won this one by the skin on our teeth. She notes some holes in the majority’s logic that bothered me as well.

For example, the majority held that lack of both (1) a grandfather clause and (2) a nearby permissive jurisdiction was reason to lean towards strict scrutiny.

(1) I feel that actually grandfather clauses weaken the logical foundations of a law. If a grandfather clause could be considered, the forbidden act is not really so damaging to the state’s interest after all. That other states did grandfather LCMs shows that there is some weakness in how seriously states view LCMs.

(2) Likewise, if a thing is evil enough to be banned outright in one place, how evil is it really if a neighboring place allows it without issue?

These inconsistencies suggest that the state’s interest in public safety is not so absolutely compelling, and that the banned items are only malum prohibitum (evil due to prohibition) rather than malum in se (evil by their inherent nature).

It would be surprising if a person’s Second Amendment rights turned on whether a person had the foresight to purchase a later-banned firearm before a law was enacted. Similarly, a ban on sale but not possession makes a practical difference only if nearby jurisdictions allow sale, meaning that under the majority’s analysis, the constitutionality of a law in one jurisdiction would turn on laws enacted in neighboring jurisdictions.

Really we need to overturn Pena v. Horan (“safe” handgun roster), the “good cause/justifiable need” cases that SCOTUS denied cert on, and a host of others. Courts are being chained to follow these precedents.

Without enough people exercising their 2A rights to make a dent in public safety, a core argument in favor of everybody having guns has only historical support from around and before the Revolutionary Era. Centuries-old laws requiring people to bear arms are less convincing as to their value without modern context showing they would improve safety today, and having less than 1% of everyone carrying and ready to stop crime is a far cry from the numbers we used to have.

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Very interesting and well articulated insights, MusashiAaron.

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I wonder how many truck loads of mags are heading in?

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