by Despite the win in Duncan v. Becerra, neither the District Court nor the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has lifted the stay of the original ruling. Thus, despite what you might see from a number of dealers of standard capacity magazines, they still cannot be shipped to California at this time.
The Firearms Policy Coalition posted the notice from the California Department of Justice regarding this to Twitter.
In addition to warning both companies and California purchasers regarding the existing stay, it also serves to give notice that California will be appealing Judge Lee’s ruling and asking for an en banc hearing. However, as of this morning, no appeal had been filed.
_Cam and Company_ had somebody from CPRA(?) on the show yesterday to explain parts of this. From what I gathered, the way this sort of court case would normally go is something like:
CPRA sues the LCM ban as an infringement.
Case is heard and Judge says yeah or nah. In this case, the judge said “It is an infringement.” The law is overturned in that instance.
The state then goes shopping for a judge to issue a stay while they appeal. Progressive Judge issues a Stay that is horrible, such as making possession illegal again.
The case is then appealed and slow marched with the law staying in affect for along time.
In this case, the original judge heard and issued the stay. But *he* controls that stay. As such he stayed the restriction on purchasing but not on possession, so people that purchased during freedom week get to keep their magazines and aren’t in trouble for having them.
At this point, the state has until the 28th(?) (they said this week, but maybe they meant next week) to decide what to do.
The original judge can, at his discretion, decide to change the stay at any moment.
So we are in a couple of weeks worth of wait and see.
If the state requests the _en bloc_ (sp?) and gets it, then there are two paths forward. One, the 9th finds the LCM ban unconstitutional and lots of good stuff happens and the state could appeal. But they might not so that this doesn’t get to SCOTUS for a nation wide decision. A sort of normal thing to do. The 9th could decide it IS constitutional at which point we have a pretty nice case on the way to SCOTUS.
Now I don’t trust SCOTUS to actually take such a case, but it is a pretty clear case and as the decision says, there are lots of side affects.
As somebody pointed out in a different blog: (“[I]t would be absurd to say that the reason why a particular weapon can be banned is that there is a statute banning it, so that it isn’t commonly owned. A law’s existence can’t be the source of its own constitutional validity.”).
Machine guns are uncommon, they are uncommon because the law makes them uncommon. Does this mean that if this opinion stands we have an in at finally getting rid of NFA?