{"id":215550,"date":"2025-05-07T14:43:33","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T19:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/?p=215550"},"modified":"2025-10-15T07:07:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T12:07:51","slug":"court-shopping-biased-benches-nothing-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/court-shopping-biased-benches-nothing-new\/","title":{"rendered":"Court-Shopping for Biased Benches Nothing New to Firearm Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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<\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/span>Estimated reading time: <\/span>7<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Larry Keane<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Court watchers scratching their heads over the legal scrum<\/a><\/strong> concerning illegal immigration are learning what the firearm industry has known for years. There are judges who will engage in legal gymnastics to arrive at a preferred result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media have been reporting on the ongoing debate<\/a><\/strong> of whether federal district court judges can issue sweeping decisions that affect policy across the entire nation. Even U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has weighed in<\/a><\/strong> on the ongoing tensions surrounding the separation of powers between the three co-equal branches of government \u2013 the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches. Each is designed to hold the others in check, ensuring that the government isn\u2019t run by fiat from just one branch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are judges who will engage in legal gymnastics to arrive at a preferred result.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

None of this is new to the firearm industry. For decades, firearm industry members have been caught in that ongoing tension between those who write the laws, those who enforce the laws and those who decide if those laws are aligned with the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take for instance, the recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Duncan v. Bonta<\/em><\/a><\/strong>. The court decided in a 7-4 en banc decision that California\u2019s ban on standard capacity magazines<\/a> did not violate the Constitution because it decided that magazines are not \u201carms\u201d protected under the Second Amendment, they\u2019re mere \u201caccoutrements\u201d despite being essential to the proper functioning of a semiautomatic firearm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judge Patrick Bumatay\u2019s dissenting opinion<\/a><\/strong> noted that a correct application of the Bruen <\/em>framework shows that since \u201cthe plain text of the Second Amendment protects the possession of magazines capable of feeding more than ten rounds, California\u2019s ban is presumptively unconstitutional.\u201d  Likewise, he explained that California failed to overcome the presumption of unconstitutionality because it did not identify a historical analogue that was relevantly similar to California\u2019s law, which \u201cstrictly bans the ownership, possession, and use of magazines in common use today.\u201d Accordingly, he would hold that California\u2019s magazine ban is unconstitutional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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