Court: Bans on High-Capacity Magazines Are “Only the Most Minor Burden on the Second Amendment”

In 2013 the city of Sunnyvale, California enacted a ban on
so-called high-capacity gun magazines. According to the new law, it
was a criminal offense to possess any magazine holding more than 10
rounds, though exceptions to the ban were granted to certain
privileged gun owners, such as “any retired peace officer holding a
valid, current Carry Concealed Weapons (CCW) permit.”

Several individuals soon filed suit in federal court,
challenging the prohibition on Second Amendment grounds. Yesterday,
those plaintiffs suffered their first setback when the United
States District Court for the Northern District of California, San
Jose Division,
refused to grant a preliminary injunction that would have
stopped the city from enforcing the ban while the litigation moved
forward.

Why? Because, the district court declared, “the right to possess
magazines having a capacity to accept more than ten rounds lies on
the periphery of the Second Amendment right, and proscribing such
magazines is, at bare minimum, substantially related to an
important government interest.”

At the Volokh Conspiracy, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh
largely
concurs with that judgment, arguing that because high-capacity
magazine bans do not impose a “substantial burden” on the Second
Amendment right to self-defense, they are likely to pass
constitutional muster. “Even if bans on magazines with more than 10
rounds are unwise,” Volokh writes, “not all unwise restrictions are
unconstitutional. That’s true for speech restrictions. It’s true
for abortion restrictions. And I think it’s true for gun
restrictions as well.”