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The two judges in the Duncan v. Becerra majority got it wrong. The majority’s opinion conflicts with the court’s own precedents and decisions by six other federal appeals courts that have maintained magazine limits under the 2nd Amendment. Authored by a judge appointed by President Donald Trump, the opinion is also striking in what it gets wrong about guns and self-defense. While the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that the 2nd Amendment grants people the right to keep some firearms in their homes for self-defense, its rulings emphasize that this right is “not unlimited” and is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever.”

California’s [large capacity magazine] law creates precisely the type of reasonable limitations the 2nd Amendment allows. Contrary to what the majority decided in Duncan v. Becerra, this law isn’t about self-defense at all. Experts in the Duncan case identified no instance in which any law-abiding Californian has ever needed to use an LCM in self-defense (the law lets people possess as many 10-round magazines as they want).

In brushing off the lack of connection between LCMs and self-defense, the panel majority elevated unsubstantiated fears of gun owners rather than Californians’ actual safety. While some gun owners might feel safer with unlimited access to the most lethal firepower, I think most Californians want to actually be safer from the mass shootings, hate crimes and gun violence that have become all too routine. Evidence tells us that protecting people from this type of violence is exactly what gun safety laws like those in California do.

I believe that had it correctly applied 2nd Amendment case law, the majority would have reached a different outcome. Before concluding that LCMs are essential for self-defense, the judges should have considered research showing that firearms are generally an ineffective means of self-defense and can perpetuate racial bias and police violence. As “stand your ground” laws prove, the impulse to fire rapidly at someone in “self-defense” contributes to race-motivated killings, as in the recent Ahmaud Arbery case.

– Giffords litigation director Hannah Shearer in CA must stand for gun safety, keep fighting for magazine restrictions

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67 COMMENTS

  1. Well, they HAVE to protect California from becoming like those states that allow for standard sized magazines in guns.

    I mean, just look at the kinds of places that allow for standard capacity magazines, constitutional carry, open carry, and private sales. They’re hardly rioting AT ALL. Businesses aren’t being burnt down, public property isn’t being trashed, random people aren’t being bodily threatened for not chanting the appropriate slogans. Something MUST be done! For the CHILDREN.

    • Every time someone arguing against guns says “for the children”, I counter with “indeed…we must protect them all”. The person will always enthusiastically agree, at which point I’ll ask their thoughts on abortion and how every one of them results in a dead child, so what can we do to stop it…

      • “Authored by a judge appointed by (gulp) President Donald Trump”

        Well, I guess I have egg on my face. Pres. DJT has been a positive for the 2A. And if re-elected will likely have 2 more SCOTUS picks, giving a 7-2 conservative majority.

        Hmmm my TDS is pretty severe, and I’m a moron.

        • I’m neither a Trump supporter, nor a Trump hater. I think the man has serious problems, and I wouldn’t like him personally if I ever met him. But, he was the only alternative to Clinton, and he remains the only alternative to Creepy Joe and the anti-2nd left. I will probably vote third party again, because I hate both Ds and Rs, but I have to give Trump his due: he has appointed pretty good judges whenever he has had the opportunity.

          That is the single best reason to keep him around.

          Now, if ony tired old Ginsberg would retire, or die . . .

        • Paul…. she already has died, they just keep her propped up and spraying fabreeze on her cold corpse

  2. Umm…. wasn’t Arbury killed by one of Sleepy Joe’s favorites, a shotgun that they were struggling over? I don’t recall anything about that incident that relates to “large capacity” magazines, but I could be wrong. Isn’t this just more of throwing shit at the wall and telling people it all stuck ?

  3. “….the judges should have considered research showing that firearms are generally an ineffective means of self-defense…”

    The stupidity is burning my eyes!!

    • Or considered Giffords’s own case, where being an unarmed leftwing bitch proved to be an ineffective means of self-defense.

      • “Or considered Giffords’s own case, where being an unarmed leftwing bitch…”

        She had a carry permit, and proudly identified herself politically as “a girl with a gun”.

        …which makes what she is doing now all the more traitorous and galling…

        • Doesn’t practically every Democrat in a rural / Southern state play that game? For that matter, numerous articles condemning CA’s skewed may-issue system state that Dianne Feinstein has/had a permit as well.

        • Giffords is a Meat Puppet.
          There simply isn’t that much “there” up there anymore. She’s simply parroting what her handlers tell her to say.

        • Don’t be so harsh on Gifford. It appears to me that she is half brain dead, and her handlers simply manipulate her as they see fit. Stand her in front of a microphone, and whisper in her ear, she just repeats it back at you, and the mic picks it up.

        • gabby giffords doesn’t know what planet she’s on after the shooting, it’s not her who is the one to blame here. The ones to blame is her ghoul husband and others who trot her out there to say what they wrote for her.

          They are evil for what they are doing to her.

    • that saves me a copy and paste. a device that often discourages continued affront just by it’s mere reveal is particularly affective in it’s effectiveness. and that ability may increase when pointing is involved, not to mention launching to end a threat permanently.

    • “firearms are generally an ineffective means of self-defense”
      She probably has unarmed guards around her for this very reason- much more effective against armed attackers.

      “can perpetuate racial bias and police violence” Those objects are crafty things, manipulating peoples’ thoughts and all. My magazines talk to me all the time, racist bastards. Can’t trust ’em.

  4. So much dum…

    This gem though “the law lets”, nah, constitutional Amendment #2 says your laws stay away from my God given right to be armed.

  5. “I believe that had it correctly applied 2nd Amendment case law, the majority would have reached a different outcome.”

    And this is the “Crux of the biscuit” (as the late, great Frank Zappa once said) – They refuse to acknowledge the 2A exist as a civil right.

    So, where do we go from here?

    Simple – We create a gun-free zone that has ‘free’ healthcare, open borders (except to ours), free university education, and every little progressive ‘perk’ they want, and we provide free transport to all that want that utopian life.

    (Cue Sam I am in 4, 3, 2, 1…)

    • “Simple – We create a gun-free zone that has ‘free’ healthcare, open borders (except to ours), free university education, and every little progressive ‘perk’ they want, and we provide free transport to all that want that utopian life.”

      How do they pay for that again? Ask New York how unreasonable taxes work out. No one is in a better position to hide their wealth or just leave than the top 1%.

      “Tax the rich. Tax the rich. Tax the rich. We did that. God forbid the rich leave,” Cuomo said of a mobile group of people who can more easily switch residences to states with lower state and local tax levels.

      “I literally talk to people all day long who are now in their Hamptons house who also lived here, or in their Hudson Valley house, or in their Connecticut weekend house, and I say, ‘You got to come back! We’ll go to dinner! I’ll buy you a drink! Come over, I’ll cook!’” the Democratic governor said Monday.

      “They’re not coming back right now. And you know what else they’re thinking? ‘If I stay there, I’ll pay a lower income tax,’ because they don’t pay the New York City surcharge,” he added, noting the wealthiest 1 percent of the Empire State’s population picks up roughly 50 percent of the state’s tax burden.

      • It would cost us very little. Most of Nevada is owned by the .gov. Mark off a reservation. Leave stacks of lumber, concrete and some tools. Leave farm tools and a shitload of MRE’s.

        Let the socialists build themselves a workers paradise. Establish border checkposts around that paradise and restrict any outward movement.

        • No need – it already exists. The truly evil part of the Left’s constant crowing about how we’re SO far behind the rest of the world in constructing a socialdemocratic paradise is that – ridiculous as the “paradise” part may be – they’re 100% factually correct!

          EVERYWHERE in the EU, plus most of Latin America, and OBTW a giant country just to our north has socialism, gun control, and everything else on their wish list; yet they insist on staying to fuck up the world’s ONE free-market Constitutional Republic. Everywhere else is so sophisticated, so advanced, so much better in every way? Fucking go there! I oppose all forms of something-for-nothing on general principle, but I’d happily support a “charity” providing one-way bus tickets to Canada to leftists in exchange for a contract to never return.

        • Yep. If you’re a socialist progressive, the whole damn world is your oyster. You can go anywhere and find government, policies, and people that are just your cup of tea.

          People like you and me, we have nowhere else to go. If the Marxists keep getting their way in this country, then we’re basically homeless.

          There is no other country on this planet where I could live the life I love. I’m getting backed into an ever-smaller corner by people who are incapable of leaving others alone. So if anybody asks why I’m angry or why I can’t just give in or compromise, or why can’t we all just get along, that’s fucking why.

        • Amen. I don’t have a “difference of opinion” with people who want me deprived of life, liberty, or property for personal choices that neither infringe the rights of others, nor violate any moral principle. I cannot “disagree civilly” with them. They want to end life as I know it, and I wholeheartedly reciprocate.

      • “How do they pay for that again?”

        The way politicians always do it, by turning on the printing press and ignoring the inflation that naturally follows, of course.

        Just imagine what ‘Progressive’ money would look like… I’m kinda drawing a blank on that, since government-printed money is obviously a white-supremacist construct and always leads to systemic racism.

        Or does systemic racism inevitably lead to white-supremacy? I forget… 😉

        • Progressive money would have pictures of Oprah, Hillary, and a thousand other women with feel-good-feelie policies. Along with a few gay arsewipes who claim to be men. You can bet that Kim Klacik’s picture wouldn’t be on that money – no room for “Uncle Tom” and the like.

  6. For far too long (since 1934 to be exact) American believers in the US Constitution have been fighting the WRONG battles. We argue against the socialist government authorities about how many bullets we can put into a loading device INSTEAD of arguing that any restriction on how to load a firearm is a specific and obvious infringement upon the right to keep and bear arms. Misinformed patriots argue that giving the government the authority to decide who can buy a firearm from a retailer is OK, but the government should not choose whether we can give or sell a gun to a friend or family member. Why are we not standing – in mass – in front of the US Capital insisting that the Second Amendment means what it says? “Shall not be infringed,” really does mean that the government does NOT have the authority to decide who may have a weapon or what weapon may be owned.

    We have allowed the federal government to decide that one weapon is illegal because the barrel is too short, but another weapon with a barrel one third as long is legal.

    We have allowed the government to proclaim one firearm technology is illegal because it allows too many bullets to be fired each time the trigger is pulled, and we wonder why supporters of that same government authority think they can limit the number of cartridges we are allowed to insert in a weapon.

    We allow the federal government to decide how much chemical propellant (gunpowder) we can have at any one time, and are surprised when another socialist government entity tells us we have to have their permission to buy any ammunition!

    When do we wise up? When do we figure out that the Marxist march upon this constitutional republic has been underway for over 100 years and the incremental dissolution of our constitutionally protected, God given rights is well underway? When do believers in the constitution stand up and demand – backed with force of arms – that the government abandon their unconstitutional infringement upon citizen’s rights?

    Socialist president Franklin Roosevelt used an economic crisis to take control of the federal government and blatantly infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms. Every democrat (and some GOP) administration since then has increased the restrictions.

    We have reached a decision point. Either citizens who actually know history and civics take up arms and reject the long brewing takeover of this nation, or, we stand back and let the Marxists use their FDR/Alinsky tactics to take complete control and eliminate the constitution!

    • Well said. This is where the slippery slope leads. Once it was somehow established that the 2A allows some “reasonable regulation” (read infringements), we’re fighting a losing battle.
      There are NO “reasonable limitations the 2nd Amendment allows”!

      We allowed the idea that we can be screwed at will take root. Now we are just haggling over how much we get bent over the barrel this time.
      Now those of us, who have the audacity to say that the 2A means exactly what it says, are called extremists.

  7. “While the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that the 2nd Amendment grants people the right to keep some firearms in their homes for self-defense, its rulings emphasize that this right is “not unlimited” and is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever.””

    Their fingers must be bright red from all that cherry pickin’.

    The 2A “grants” nothing. Can they show us where in the 2A that the “right” is limited?

    • There is another tactic that could be used to eviscerate the “National Firearms Act of 1934”.
      “Certain weapons” could not be banned because of that pesky Second Amendment but could be “taxed” out of existence at the time by an onerous (and expensive) tax.
      Ten years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine for failure to pay a $200 “tax” IS “cruel and unusual punishment” and as such is unconstitutional.
      The NFA could be construed as “cruel and unusual punishment for failure to pay a “tax”.
      Accordingly, the 1986 Hughes Amendment could be considered a “restraint of trade” in lawful Second Amendment items.
      Any “legal scholars” willing to take on the aforementioned laws?

  8. Giffords is just following the leftie anti-gun tradition of spewing lies and talking points when they lose on the merits. Just watch them lose their minds when RBG does the Dead Parrot and Trump appointments her replacement!

  9. The demented nitwit who shot Giffords was a product of an education system concocted by b. h. obama’s mentor the communist terrorist Chicago’s lily white bill ayers et al. Ayers was a key player in the Weather Underground and advised followers to “kill your parents.” Most people would get away from a scumbag like that but not b.h. obama, he launched his political career from the home of Bill Ayers. To know the ideology of bill ayers and the useful idiots in the streets do the looting and arson is to know today’s democRat Party.

    TRUMP/PENCE 2020.

  10. Grabby Giffords’ gun-grabbing buddy Hannah Shearer makes a BS argument that is so much Word Salad….and it needs to be tossed.

    • I think they’ll get to it. Taking a baseball bat to an old man defending his business should get a reaction.

      I actually hope Antifa, et. all start deploying more firearms. The backlash will only help Trump be re-elected…

  11. Giffords, and her anti-American hate group, needs to be investigated under the RICO Act and for attempting to deprive Americans of their civil rights.

  12. So, Gifford’s wants California to have an Unconstitutional law. Much like other gun restriction stuff and, let’s not forget ,the immigration and anti-Ice stuff. And this is news why? We expect it from Commifornia. Until the citizenry wakes up instead of being woke up, the stupid will continue. I think Trump should start a Western wall while he’s at it.

  13. “California’s [large capacity magazine] law creates precisely the type of reasonable limitations the 2nd Amendment allows”. What part of “shall not be infringed” don’t they understand?

  14. To maintain a rate of high volume fire the break open single shot is best deployed using a three man fire control team. One fires the weapon, one pushes the release, and the other charges the weapon with the projectile. Using this method and a well trained crew the volume of fire can reach speeds equivalent to that of a Vulcan cannon. TM:7789025 Magazine Restrictions And How To Improvise

  15. I’d really like to know how much of Giffords brain was left after she was shot and where the damage was. I’d also like to see a cognitive test done on her.

    I believe she’s being abused in that she is being motored around to various places and then stood up to perform like an automaton that obeys instructions and repeats back what it’s told to say.

    That may sound cruel and mean but I really do have concerns that this person who was shot in the head is actually acting on her own and forming these opinions herself and not being manipulated like a dime store sock puppet.

  16. If you can decide that 11 rounds is large capacity, you can decide that 10 rounds is large capacity. If you can decide that 10 rounds is large capacity, you can decide that five rounds is large capacity. Eventually the only correct number is one or zero. Or, you can decide that three 10 round magazines is too many (“who needs 30 rounds”). Then two. Then one.

    • Ol’ Slo-Mo-Joe already went there. Clip-a-zine’s that hold more than 1 are on the Biden chopping block.

      “The idea that we don’t have elimination of assault type weapons, magazines that can hold multiple bullets in them, it’s absolutely mindless,”

      – Joe Biden

      Here’s the video for the pathological lying trolls:

      https://youtu.be/sKYYWc_7_iU

  17. If they can only count to 10, everything above 5 is simply a HUGE number…. and the fucked up State government does not even know what a positive number is.

    I doubt that Mexico would take them for free, but we should try…

  18. sorry to be like this, I really am, but i am sick and tired of my god giving rights being attacked. the Giffords should just F.O.A.D. so in November GET OUT AND VOTE, and if you own guns and vote for a communist (democrap) you should not own guns, turn them in, you are too stupid to own guns. that is why you keep voting for the very people who are trying very hard to take them away from you.( and they are getting close to that goal).

  19. The 2nd Amendment is the only amendment that uses these words: SHALL N O T BE INFRINGED.
    Yet it is the most infringed amendment in the Constitution.

  20. When the opening paragraph cannot even get describe the topic under discussion correctly. The rest of the article is is worthless.

    “While the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that the 2nd Amendment grants people the right to keep some firearms in their homes for self-defense,”

    The 2nd Amendment does NOT grant any right to the people. The 2nd amendment restricts the government from infringing on the inalienable right that the people possessed before the United States was even formed. Second, there is no limitation on the right restricting arms to the home for self-defense. The right is to keep (own, possess, store) and bear (carry, transport, move) arms. there is no mention of home in the second amendment. The only constraint is on the government not the people. The “government may not infringe (undermine, erode, diminish).”

    “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

    Can any rational person truly believe that people have the right to carry arms only within their own house when house is not even mentioned. Restricting the right to a house is the very definition of infringement.

    When you start an argument with a false premise, the argument is built on a foundation of sand and cannot stand.

    • I thought that all basic constitutionally protected human rights are only valid inside one’s home. You can speak freely if no one can hear it. Worship any god if no one can see it, associate with others if no one finds out and so on. Logically, you can carry a gun, not larger than .50 caliber with reasonable capacity, inside your house. That’s the way the Bill of Rights works, right?

  21. At the end of the day, every person has a natural right to defend themselves, and when you live in a place where you’re not going to get police response, then having a normal 12, 15, 17, etc. round magazine is acceptable and needed.

    If you’ve ever served in combat, then you know the stress of having to change magazines when you’re dry. When you need your weapon to protect yourself, you want to have as little dry time as possible. Especially with targets on the move shooting back.

    At some point in your life you have to weigh the pro’s vs. the con’s and decide if you’re a glass half empty person or a glass half full person. Just because a person has a gun doesn’t make them bad. I’d wager that the vast majority of gun owners are legitimately good people. Guns are not bad, especially when they equalize a bad situation, like rape or a riot where people have a high probability of wanting to kill you.

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