The result is that any law-abiding citizen may lose his liberty, and (not ironically) his Second Amendment rights, as a result of exercising his constitutional right to keep and bear arms if the arm falls within the complicated legal definition of an “assault weapon.” If ever the existence of a state statute had a chilling effect on the exercise of a constitutional right, this is it.
Roger T. Benitez
United States District Judge
September 23, 2020
James Miller, et al., v. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, et al.
[Chilling effect!!
This is awesome! It’s an infringement upon a specific enumerated right if it causes a “chilling effect” upon the exercise of that right. This has long been the case for First Amendment infringement law but it wasn’t until 2018 in Illinois that I saw it applied to a Second Amendment case.
This is paving the highway to throwing out most of the stupid gun laws in this nation. Licensing, gun and gun owner registration, and even background checks could get eventually thrown out if we approach this incrementally.—Joe]
Benitez for SCOTUS!
I hope this holds through any en banc proceedings. The whole “chilling effect” concept is an elegant way to eliminate so many of the B.S. regulations that we’ve had to live by – worrying that having a gun stock that is 1/4″ too short won’t result in a tax infraction that requires you to pay a $5 tax. but instead will get your dog, child and wife killed (Randy Weaver). Needing to throw away perfectly good gun parts and replacing with domestic junk to assemble a rifle from a “kit” (922r compliance). What could be more “chilling” than having to show proof of taking a class before you can buy a Ruger 10-22 “assault weapon” (Washington state).
Turning the words of numerous elite liberals around – Burn it down! The whole edifice of gun control.
A revenue law.(34′ NFA), taxing machine guns. How can you say some law is justified as a revenue law when it can no long rise revenue? We all have a ton of good questions, that deserve answers. We just have a hard time finding someone professional enough to ask them.
well, good news is good news ….. but, whoa up, friends, this is a district court trial judges ruling, and it is likely to go before a three judge panel on appeal, and that may end up going before the entire panel of 9th circuit appellate judges, who have not proven all that friendly to 2nd amendment adherents.
the case has “all the way to the supreme court” written all over it.
in which case, keeping donald trump in office is very critical to the preservation of our gun rights, insofar as they are to be preserved in the federal courts.
give money to trump’s funding raising efforts, and spend as if your life depends on it, because it does. and, for christ’s sake, vote for trump. you all listening.
There is certainly a reason why this argument was not used successfully generations ago, say, in the 1930s regarding the NFA, or for any infringement debated and passed since then, but I have no solid intel as to what that reason might be; only speculation.
Does anyone else notice that this argument comes, after decades of curious silence (on the chilling effect argument) in the face of the obvious, only at a time when the left is arming itself and doing violence all across the country? Or would y’all prefer that I not notice?
A comparison of the riots of the 1960s and those of today might be in order. Though I’m not qualified to give a full analysis; there are several obvious differences. For one thing, black Americans in the ’60s were more Protestant (Bible based) Christian and much more in favor of the Republican Party. There were plenty of Marxist agitators around then, as now, of course, but Martin Luther King Jr. had been out quoting the Bible and the US construction, and he clearly wanted the races to stop obsessing over race, view themselves as Americans, one nation under God, and pay attention to character-building and edification rather than skin color. Maybe the left is now realizing that the gains they made after the murder of King and the implementation of Johnson’s Great Society (thus turning the civil rights movement upside down) are ready to slip away. Blexit is happening. They must soon capitalize on the racial division they’ve been fomenting or they’re going to lose it as the potent strategic weapon they’ve built. So it’s now or never.
But this time we’re being given an entirely false choice. Either we descend into chaos and hatred in a fractured, irreconcilable America (the Democratic Party way) or we are lured into the open, welcoming, comforting arms of ecumenical Babylon (false religion) (the Republican Party way), wherein we’ll “Coexist” and be destroyed both as a nation and as individuals. Both parties will bring us to that point. They need each other to maintain the dialectic.
Just thinking aloud here. And;
It is entirely possible that by the time our gun rights are substantially restored, we’ll not be thinking we won very much.
Let’s not forget about the laws chilling the enumerated rights to BEAR arms. Gun free zones, places without strong preemption laws and the outsourcing of legal restrictions on carrying to private corporation. Even TX does the latter, though the procedural requirements are difficult enough that few corporations actually do it.