SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A federal judge on Thursday blocked a California law set to take effect Saturday that would have barred gun owners from possessing high-capacity ammunition magazines.
The judge ruled that the ban approved by the Legislature last year takes away gun owners' Second Amendment rights and amounts to the government taking people's private property without compensation.
California law has prohibited buying or selling the magazines since 2000 but until now allowed those who had them to keep them.
"If this injunction does not issue, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of otherwise law-abiding citizens will have an untenable choice: become an outlaw or dispossess one's self of lawfully acquired property," San Diego-based U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez wrote.
He issued a preliminary injunction blocking the law from taking effect while he considers the underlying lawsuit filed by the National Rifle Association-affiliated California Rifle & Pistol Association.
Meanwhile, a Sacramento-based judge on Thursday rejected a similar challenge by several other gun owners' rights organizations, creating what Ari Freilich, staff attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, called "dueling opinions" that may be sorted out on appeal.
Had the ban taken effect, owners would have been required to get rid of their magazines by sending them out of state, altering them to hold no more than 10 bullets, destroying them or turning them into law enforcement agencies. Possession could have been punished by $100 fines or up to a year in jail.
A Section on 06/30/2017