Judge strikes down high capacity magazine ban

Prop 63, which was passed with highly visible support from Governor (then LG) Newsom, included a ban on high capacity magazines. That was struck down yesterday:

A federal judge on Friday declared unconstitutional a key provision of California’s Proposition 63 that banned possession of high-capacity gun magazines often used in mass shootings, ensuring that the voter-approved prohibition will remain tied up in court for some time to come.

SF Chronicle

The opinion, which is sure to be appealed, reads like the opposite of what just happened in New Zealand. As in Australia, when encountered with the reality of a mass shooting, they responded with action to protect themselves. Here, the gun lobby will not permit that. The judge went on to call mass shootings rare, while emphasizing how many times women were saved from peril because they had more than 10 bullets.

All this is despite the fact that guns when deployed in self-defense (real or imagines) do more damage to innocents and the owners themselves, than criminals. For more details, read this article on Politico citing actual examples, or this Scientific American article about the actual research on the subject. But the gun lobby wants to take it on faith that guns make us safer. They do not. And so they block sensible safety measures.

And yet, we have all the evidence that mass shootings happen all too often. Nothing changes, and so we just continue the cycle. The bloodshed continues, the NRA and the gun manufacturers make more money while we continue to see gun violence.