Much better reading than the Mueller report.

The Mueller Report (based on a hoax and lies) will cost $32-35 million (of your and my money), and for what? Because it was so expensive, and found little to nothing, you know it had to end up being long and drawn out. (it did net some $20 million in fines, forfeitures, and settlements)

Now this is worth reading, and it only cost the good judges salary.

I don't usually post whole copy/paste in posts, but this is worth it.

https://www.omahaoutdoors.com/blog/the-11-best-quotes-from-the-duncan-v-becerra-california-magazine-ban-smackdown/

It’s been a few weeks since Judge Roger Benitez of the Southern District of California struck down California Penal Code § 32310, more colloquially known as California’s magazine ban. For about a week, that meant the ban was entirely unenforced – though the decision was then stayed and as a result the ban is now back in place pending review by the Ninth Circuit. During that week, more than a few magazines were shipped to California.

Listed in the order in which they appear in the article are 11 of my favorites – eleven because that’s one more than California would allow.

1. “It is enough to make an angel swear.”

On Page 12 of the ruling, Judge Benitez discusses how complex the California magazine laws are. He’s especially concerned with “wobblers,” or statutes which can be charged as misdemeanors or felonies. He quotes a long passage from a related law that turns gun owners into felons for tiny, inconsequential violations of arbitrarily written rules which are nearly impossible for the average person to understand – before making it quite clear that such laws violate due process rights.

2. “The Second Amendment does not exist to protect the right to bear down pillows and foam baseball bats. It protects guns and every gun is dangerous.”

On Page 21, Judge Benitez makes it very clear that there is no inherent lethality test in the Second Amendment. As he said, guns are dangerous, and the idea that something is too dangerous because it exceeds an invented limit is not an acceptable reason to put people in jail and deprive them of their rights.

3. “Artificial limits will eventually lead to disarmament. It is an insidious plan to disarm the populace and it depends on for its success a subjective standard of “necessary” lethality.”

In a footnote on the following page, the judge pens a sentence which seems to speak directly to the core argument of gun rights supporters – that the eventual goal here is to continually decrease what guns are available so that further incremental restrictions may be put in place.

4. “…too bad if you complied with the law but needed 11 rounds to stop an attacker, or a group of attackers, or a mob. Now, you are dead.”

Yeow! Only on a few occasions have I ever read a judicial decision and thought to myself, “This judge truly gets what it’s like in the real world.” This was one of those occasions. Go to Page 23 for the context, which makes a strong point.

5. “Section 32310 is not narrowly tailored; it is not tailored at all. It fits like a burlap bag.”

Throughout the ruling, Judge Benitez makes it clear he was trying to get the Attorney General of California, Becerra, to explain how such a broadly written law could be constitutional. On Page 43, he makes clear his distaste for a poorly written law which turns hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people into criminals without thought for the actual situation the law claims to address.

6. “Why 10 rounds as a limit? The State has no answer.”

Here’s something that comes up throughout, and it was obviously an issue the State could not give a firm answer to. On Page 46, Judge Benitez asks a simple and obvious question – why does it have to be ten rounds? There is no historical basis for this number, nor is there any evidentiary one.

7. “(These) arguments live on like legal zombies lurching through Second Amendment jurisprudence.”

On Page 54, Benitez discusses “Turner deference,” or the idea that federal courts should give leeway to statutes enacted by state legislatures because those legislatures know how to rule their particular roost best. Unfortunately for the State, this was discussed and dismissed in the Supreme Court case of Heller v. DC, the seminal case on the Second Amendment from which Benitez’s reasoning in this case flows.

8. “Congress tried for a decade the nationwide experiment of prohibiting large capacity magazines. It failed. California has continued the failed experiment for another decade and now suggests that it may continue to do so ad infinitum without demonstrating success. That makes no sense.”

This one is admittedly a bit longer than the others, but on Page 59 he takes a shot at the idea that just because a law has been in existence for a while is not a reason for it to keep on existing. I found it quite sharp, even if it didn’t have the brevity of many other quotes here.

9. “Imagine the crimes that could be solved without the Fourth Amendment. The state could search for evidence of a crime anywhere on a whim.”

In making its case for the ban to stay in place, the State waved its hands and yelled about how it was necessary for the public good and safety. Judge Benitez rejected that on Page 81, pointing out that just because something might make it easier to reduce crime is not a reason to allow it to infringe on constitutional rights.

10. “Casting a common sized firearm magazine able to hold more than 10 rounds as a nuisance, as a way around the Second Amendment, is like banning a book as a nuisance, as a way around the First Amendment.”

On the very next page, Judge Benitez takes to task the excuses made by the State as to why taking away the property of citizens does not constitute a taking under the Takings Clause, even though that’s literally what it is. The State did its best by trying to label magazines a “nuisance.” It wasn’t good enough.

11. “California Penal Code § 32310 is hereby declared to be unconstitutional in its entirety and shall be enjoined.”

I know who I want for the next Supreme Court Justice. (He is the perfect replacement for Ginsburg)