SAN DIEGO – A federal judge overturned California’s ban on firearms labeled as “assault weapons” on Thursday. In his ruling, the judge said the three-decade-old prohibition against semi-automatic firearms violates the constitutional right to bear arms.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego noted that criminals who misuse the firearm cannot dictate the rules for millions of law-abiding American households who carry rifles like the AR-15 for self-defense or any other lawful activity, the Daily Wire reported.
In 1989, California became the first U.S. state to enact such a law after five children were killed in a school shooting.
“California’s answer to the criminal misuse of a few is to disarm its many good residents,” Benitez wrote in a 79-page ruling. “That knee-jerk reaction is constitutionally untenable, just as it was 250 years ago. The Second Amendment stands as a shield from government imposition of that policy.”
Benitez ruled in favor of several gun advocacy groups who challenged the Assault Weapons Control Act and other state laws that undermine the U.S. Constitution.
John Dillon is an attorney for the plaintiffs who sued the state to overturn the onerous law. He praised Benitez’s ruling as “constitutionally sound and addresses the many inadequacies of the State’s arguments and so-called justifications for this unconstitutional ban.”
“We will continue to fight for our Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights through any appeal until the State is forced to start respecting these rights,” Dillon said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Benitez called California’s attempt to prohibit residents from purchasing certain firearms a “failed experiment,” and used his famous analogy by comparing the AR-15 to common knives. He reiterated that point again in the introduction of Thursday’s ruling.
“Like the Bowie Knife which was commonly carried by citizens and soldiers in the 1800s, ‘assault weapons’ are dangerous, but useful,” Benitez wrote. “But unlike the Bowie Knife, the United States Supreme Court has said, ‘[t]here is a long tradition of widespread lawful gun ownership by private individuals in this country.’”
Benitez issued an injunction blocking his latest ruling with a 10-day hold so the state can file an appeal, something California’s attorney general typically does when Benitez has ruled against the state’s effort to disarm its citizenry in the past.
The judge issued a similar ruling in a 2021 case that was later appealed.
