9th Circuit stays ruling overturning California ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines

(TNS) — The American debate over the legality of modern gun laws was again on display this week in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a panel of 11 judges hit pause on a decision overturning California’s ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Last month, a lower federal court judge overturned that ban as unconstitutional. On Tuesday, the larger “en banc” panel stayed that decision — stopping it from taking effect — pending an appeal by the state.

The decision divided the judges along ideological lines. The court’s liberal majority found that the state of California had made “strong arguments” for why the ban on ammunition magazines with more than 10 rounds in them is constitutional. Even under a new, stricter test for gun laws set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court last year, the jurists found, the state is likely to win its appeal.

The majority wrote that California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office had presented evidence that large-capacity magazines “pose significant threats to public safety,” that there would be an “influx” of such magazines without a stay. The jurists added that such a stay would have “no effect” on the public’s ability to purchase a “wide range of firearms, as much ammunition as they want, and an unlimited number of magazines containing ten rounds or fewer.”

The majority also wrote that “public interest tips in the favor of a stay,” as “mass shootings nearly always involve large-capacity magazines.”

The panel’s conservative minority, dissenting, called their majority colleagues’ position “laughably absurd” and part of a pattern of decisions by liberal 9th Circuit jurists that has given “a blank check for governments to restrict firearms in any way they pleased.”

The en banc panel took the case after U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego ruled in September that the ban is unconstitutional.