For the second time, a federal judge overturns California’s assault weapon ban

Nearly a month after he overturned California’s ban on large-capacity firearm magazines for the second time, U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez doubled down on his opposition to the state’s assault weapons ban, declaring in an opinion that the law “has no historical pedigree and it is extreme.”

This marks the judge’s second time with the case, Miller v. Bonta. He previously struck down the state’s ban on assault weapons in 2021. In his decision, he likened the assault rifle to a Swiss Army Knife and called it “good for both home and battle.”

The case had proceeded to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which remanded it back to the district court level after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, which established a new framework for consideration of such laws.

Benitez opened his decision by comparing the assault rifle to the Bowie knife, saying that both are “dangerous, but useful.”

“But unlike the Bowie Knife, the United States Supreme Court has said, ‘there is a long tradition of widespread lawful gun ownership by private individuals in this country,’” Benitez wrote.

The judge, known for his fiery opinions, wrote that the state was discriminating against assault rifles because of how they looked.

“They have the same minimum overall length, they use the same triggers, they have the same barrels, and they can fire the same ammunition, from the same magazines, at the same rate of fire, and at the same velocities, as other rifles,” he wrote.

Benitez wrote that while people have heard about mass shootings such as those in Uvalde, Texas, Parkland, Florida, or Sandy Hook, Connecticut, “they do not hear of the AR-15 used in Florida by a pregnant wife and mother to defend her family from two armed, hooded, and masked home intruders.”

“California’s ‘assault weapon’ ban takes away from its residents the choice of using an AR-15 type rifle for self-defense. Is it because modern rifles are used so frequently for crime? No,” Benitez wrote.

The judge said that more is needed to justify the state’s ban on assault weapons than “disarming some mass shooters.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has called Benitez, who was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush in 2004, a “stone cold ideologue” and a “wholly owned subsidiary of the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is defending the ban, issued a statement in response to the decision saying that “weapons of war have no place on our streets.”

“This has been state law in California for decades, and we will continue to fight for our authority to keep our citizens safe from firearms that cause mass casualties,” Bonta said.

He added that in the meantime, as his office appeals the judge’s decision, the ban remains in effect in California.

“Once again, this district court issued a dangerous and misguided decision and I will work vigorously to reverse it on appeal,” Bonta said.