NJ - Magazine Restriction Goes Even Further
By Jacob Sullum. December. 6th, 2018
Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals Court for the 3rd Circuit upheld New Jersey's 10-round limit on gun magazines, echoing five other federal appeals courts that have found such laws to be consistent with the Second Amendment. "New Jersey's law reasonably fits the State's interest in public safety and does not unconstitutionally burden the Second Amendment's right to self-defense in the home," Judge Patty Shwartz concludes in an opinion joined by Judge Joseph Greenaway.
A powerful dissent by Judge Stephanos Bibas, the third member of the 3rd Circuit panel, argues that the majority's reasoning fails to take the Second Amendment as seriously as the Supreme Court said it should be in District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark 2008 decision that overturned a local ban on handguns. "The Second Amendment is an equal part of the Bill of Rights," Bibas writes. "We must treat the right to keep and bear arms like other enumerated rights, as the Supreme Court insisted in Heller. We may not water it down and balance it away based on our own sense of wise policy."
New Jersey, which has banned magazines holding more than 15 rounds since 1990, imposed the stricter limit last June in response to mass shootings.
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Yet another infringement in the long saga of New Jersey's 'gun control' measures - chipping away inexorably at the Second Amendment. How is this likely to affect the criminal's use of firearms? About zero. As usual it is the law abiding gun owner who is affected - someone who just might need, in a defensive situation, all the rounds he can have available to be able to stop a lethal threat. Perhaps the skilled IDPA competitor might achieve a fast mag change but for most, it further diminishes their potential for survival. First it was 15 rounds, now 10 rounds - how long before 5 is considered the limit?
