In a forcefully worded ruling, a federal judge in San Diego on Friday struck down a state law banning gun magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, handing gun rights advocates a sweeping victory.
U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez ruled that the California law violated the Second Amendment rights of gun owners and issued an injunction barring state officials from enforcing it, invoking the nation's Colonial past as well as recent cases from around the country in which gun owners ran out of bullets while confronting intruders in their homes.
He concluded that the state law effectively made criminals out of ordinary citizens and was an overreaction to high-profile gun crimes, Governing.com reports.
"Bad political ideas cannot be stopped by criminalizing bad political speech," he wrote. "Crime waves cannot be broken with warrantless searches and unreasonable seizures. Neither can the government response to a few mad men with guns and ammunition be a law that turns millions of responsible, law-abiding people trying to protect themselves into criminals. Yet, this is the effect of California's large-capacity magazine law."
