BATON ROUGE, LA – Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich are leading a 22-state coalition defending the Second Amendment rights of American citizens.
Louisiana, Arizona, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming are filing a legal brief at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Duncan v. Rodriquez – a challenge of California’s unconstitutional ban on extremely common magazines for firearms.
“California is trying to turn otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals simply for owning the magazines that come standard to many of the most popular firearms in our country,” said Attorney General Jeff Landry. “As radical leftist lawmakers in California and beyond persist in their attempts to legislatively overrule our constitutional rights, I will continue to stand strong in defense of our right to keep and bear arms.”
In the amicus brief, Attorney General Landry and his colleagues note that California Penal Code 32310 violates the Second Amendment: “This Court, therefore, should not apply a balancing approach – like strict scrutiny or intermediate scrutiny – to a ban on arms commonly used by law abiding citizens for lawful purposes. Such an approach would be inconsistent with the decisions of the Supreme Court in Heller, McDonald, and Caetano.”
If California is successful in asking the federal courts to ignore the Constitution, the legal decision could affect Louisianans’ and all Americans’ right to protect themselves.
“The enumerated right to bear arms reflected in the Second Amendment is fundamental and predates the Bill of Rights. The right is important to millions of Americans, including many of our most vulnerable citizens living in disadvantaged communities. The arms at issue in these proceedings are commonly used by millions of law-abiding citizens for a myriad of lawful purposes,” added the attorneys general.
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In 2016, California passed the law banning the possession of magazines capable of holding ten or more rounds, making it a misdemeanor. California residents were required to give up their magazines or face a year in jail. A lawsuit was filed to strike down the law.
In 2017, a U.S. District Judge of California blocked the law from taking effect. California’s Attorney General then appealed to the Ninth Circuit where, in August 2020, a three-judge panel ruled the law was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. California’s Attorney General once again appealed the ruling and an 11-member panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will rehear the case.
