While we are confident the judge’s ruling will be overturned on appeal, the gun lobby continues to advance extreme positions on the Second Amendment in courts across the country, including the US Supreme Court. They can attest to the reality that these weapons are not like ‘swiss army knives’ nor are mass shootings only a ‘very small’ problem. Too many families across the nation have lost loved ones in shootings carried out with assault weapons. This is especially insulting coming on Gun Violence Awareness Day. A judge with extremist views prioritized weapons of war over the lives of Californians. “Today’s decision is alarming and wrongly decided. Statement from Robyn Thomas, Giffords Law Center Executive Director: The ruling is stayed for 30 days to allow California to file an appeal. Since 1989, assault weapons have been banned in California. District Judge Roger Benitez issued a ruling striking down the California assault weapons ban.
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Gavin Newsom raged against it, calling it a “slap in the face” to victims of gun violence and enumerating mass shootings carried out with AR-15 in tweets.īenitez may make another ruling on weapons soon: a case challenging California’s ban on billy clubs and blackjacks is currently on his docket.Washington, DC - Giffords Law Center, part of the gun violence prevention organization founded by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, issued the following statement after U.S. State Attorney General Rob Bonta vowed to appeal Friday’s ruling before it is slated to take effect in 30 days. His decisions on Second Amendment issues often read more like what an advocate would write and not what you would expect from a neutral dispassionate judge.”īenitez declined a petition from Tirschwell’s organization to file an amicus brief in the high-capacity magazine case.īenitez’s Friday ruling has a ways to go before it is the law of the land. “And he regularly adopts the language and tone of the gun lobby. “(Benitez) reads the Second Amendment more broadly than just about any other court in the country,” Eric Tirschwell, the managing director for gun control group Everytown Law, told The San Diego Union-Tribune last year. In the Southern District of California, there is no formal option to challenge a transfer, though the state’s attorney general tried to do so late last year when a lawsuit against the state over what handguns can be sold under the Safe Handguns Roster was assigned to Benitez. Federal courts allow for related cases-ones that concern essentially the same legal questions as preceding ones-to be transferred from one federal judge to another in the same district after a case is assigned, which is a random process. “California’s law prohibiting acquisition and possession of magazines able to hold any more than 10 rounds places a severe restriction on the core right of self-defense of the home such that it amounts to a destruction of the right and is unconstitutional under any level of scrutiny,” he wrote at the time.Ĭalifornia gun control groups contend that gun rights organizations are abusing a procedural rule of federal court to have Benitez hear their cases. In 2017, he had temporarily barred the law from taking effect in the first place. The case is scheduled to be reheard on June 22. The state has appealed the ruling.īenitez also struck down a California ban on high-capacity magazines in 2019. “California’s new ammunition background check law misfires and the Second Amendment rights of California citizens have been gravely injured,” he wrote. Bush in 2003, Benitez overturned a law in California requiring background checks for anyone purchasing ammunition with a mammoth 120-page ruling in April of last year. Fox News dubbed him a “ Pro-Second Amendment Judge” in an October 2020 headline.īorn in Havana, Cuba in 1950 and nominated to the federal bench by George W. He has repeatedly ruled against California’s gun laws, to the delight of gun rights advocates and the frustration of officials and gun control groups. In fact, he has sided with gun rights advocates so often that some activists believe such groups are deliberately steering their cases to him.
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It was far from the first time Roger Benitez took an expansive definition of the Second Amendment. “Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment,” wrote Roger Benitez. A senior federal judge in California overturned the state’s longtime ban on assault weapons Friday, likening an AR-15 to a Swiss Army Knife in his ruling.