In Victory for Gun Safety, En Banc Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Holds California’s Law Prohibiting Large-Capacity Magazines Constitutional; Everytown Law Responds

Decision Continues the Unanimous Trend of Federal Appeals Courts Ruling Large-Capacity Magazine  Prohibitions Constitutional 

CALIFORNIA – In a life-saving decision, the en banc United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has upheld California’s law prohibiting large-capacity magazines as constitutional in Duncan v. Bonta.

“Large-capacity magazines are the accessory of choice for mass shooters,” said Bill Taylor, Deputy Director of Second Amendment Litigation at Everytown Law. “Laws that restrict them are critical public safety measures, and every federal appeals court to consider a Second Amendment challenge to these laws—including the en banc Ninth Circuit in its decision today—has correctly rejected that challenge.”

The case involves a Second Amendment challenge to California’s law prohibiting possession of magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition—which are frequently used in the deadliest mass shootings. Today, the en banc court held that California’s law comports with the Second Amendment, reversed a district court’s contrary conclusion, and remanded with the instruction to enter judgment in favor of the Attorney General of the State of California. The en banc court also rejected plaintiffs’ challenge to the law under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.

From 2015 to 2022, shootings with four or more people killed where large-capacity magazines were used resulted in nearly five times as many people shot, more than twice as many people killed, and nearly 10 times as many people wounded per incident, on average. Additionally, in that time period, at least eight of the ten deadliest mass shootings involved a large-capacity magazine. 

Currently, 14 states and Washington, D.C. prohibit large-capacity magazines. These laws were repeatedly upheld by federal courts in the fourteen years between the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which first held that there is an individual right under the Second Amendment, and its June 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen. Courts applying Bruen and the Supreme Court’s most recent Second Amendment ruling in United States v. Rahimi have continued to uphold them—including the four federal courts of appeals to reach this issue since Bruen (the First, Seventh, and D.C. Circuits, joined today by the Ninth Circuit) and federal district courts in California, Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. 

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