SAN FRANCISCO—San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera praised a federal judge who denied a motion backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) to preliminarily enjoin San Francisco from enforcing a current enacted ban on the possession of gun magazines capable of unloading more than 10 rounds of ammunition, according a press release from the SF City Attorney’s website.
Herrera responded to Judge Alsup’s ruling by stating, “I applaud Judge Alsup for a wise ruling that powerfully affirms San Francisco’s rationale for enacting our common sense gun safety law. The U.S. Supreme Court has been very clear that state and local governments are constitutionally entitled to enact reasonable firearms regulations, and that Second Amendment rights aren’t unlimited. Unfortunately, the NRA is pushing a radical litigation strategy that goes far beyond what’s reasonable. I’m grateful to the district court for drawing that distinction in persuasive terms.”
The ruling was made on Tuesday, February 19, when U.S. District Judge William Alsup indicated the restriction will go into effect on April 7. In the 12-page ruling, Judge Alsup ruled that public interest enforcement favors stricter enforcement of the city’s current gun safety ordinance. In his decision, he ruled that San Francisco’s gun safety policy trumps the rights of gun owners to possess lethal firearms.
“In assessing the balance of equities, those rare occasions must be weighed against the more frequent and documented occasions when a mass murderer with a gun holding eleven or more rounds empties the magazine and slaughters innocents,” Alsup wrote. “One critical difference is that whereas the civilian defender rarely will exhaust the up-to-ten magazine, the mass murderer has every intention of firing every round possible and will exhaust the largest magazine available to him. On balance, more innocent lives will be saved by limiting the capacity of magazines than by allowing the previous regime of no limitation to continue.” [Emphasis Alsup’s]
By LaDale Anderson
