The state attorney general has already vowed to appeal the decision.
A federal judge overturned California’s 32-year-old ban on assault weapons, calling the law unconstitutional in a Friday decision that compared AR-15s to Swiss Army knives, setting the stage for an appeals court battle over one of the country’s oldest assault weapons bans. Federal district and appeals court judges have upheld similar assault weapon bans in Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Chicago and Washington, D.C., in recent years. The Supreme Court chose not to hear challenges to Connecticut and New York’s assault weapons bans in 2016, but the court has grown more conservative since then.
