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Federal appeals court upholds California's ban on high-capacity magazines

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A federal appeals court in California on Tuesday upheld the state’s ban on high-capacity magazines, reversing a lower-court ruling in which a federal judge in San Diego compared an AR-15 rifle to a Swiss Army knife.
The 7-4 decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit says that the state’s restriction on the size of magazines that may be used with firearms only minimally interferes with the right to self-defense, and there is no evidence that anyone was unable to defend their home and family due to the lack of high-capacity magazines. The court noted that in the past 50 years, high-capacity magazines have been used in about three-quarters of gun massacres with 10 or more deaths and in 100% of gun massacres with 20 or more deaths. The judges added that more than twice as many people have been killed or injured in mass shootings that involved a high-capacity magazine compared to mass shootings that involved a smaller-capacity magazine. “The ban on legal possession of large-capacity magazines reasonably supported California’s effort to reduce the devastating damage wrought by mass shootings,” the court said.

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