LAPD Won’t Enforcement of California’s ‘High Capacity’ Magazine Ban

By Lee Williams via The Second Amendment Foundation

The Los Angeles Police Department has stopped enforcing California’s state law banning “high capacity” magazines, according to an internal LAPD email obtained by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. 

The email was sent Wednesday morning to all LAPD personnel by Commander Ernest Eskridge, assistant commanding officer of the department’s Detective Bureau. 

Eskridge noted that on June 23, the “United States Supreme Court vacated the ruling in Duncan v. Bonta and remanded the case back to the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeal for further consideration in light of its recent decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.” 

Because of this ruling, Eskridge said in the email, all sworn LAPD personnel shall not “investigate, detain or arrest” anyone for possessing a magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds, unless they are already legally barred from possession ammunition in the state.

There were three issues in Duncan v. Bonta: whether a law prohibiting law-abiding citizens from possessing magazines in common use violates the Second Amendment; whether confiscating legally obtained magazines violated the Fifth Amendment’s “takings clause;” and whether the “two-step” approach the 9^th Circuit and other courts applied to Second Amendment cases is constitutional and meets Supreme Court precedents. 

In its Bruen decision, the Supreme Court held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home and that New York’s “special need” requirement for a concealed-carry permit violates those protections. It also ruled that the two-step rights balancing method by which many gun control laws have been upheld since Heller violates the Second Amendment.

Please check back throughout the day for more on this breaking story. 

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