Opinion ID: 614652
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The prohibitions survive intermediate scrutiny

Text: Recall that when subject to intermediate scrutiny the Government has the burden of showing there is a substantial relationship or reasonable fit between, on the one hand, the prohibition on assault weapons and magazines holding more than ten rounds and, on the other, its important interests in protecting police officers and controlling crime. The record evidence substantiates that the District's prohibition is substantially related to those ends. The Committee on Public Safety relied upon a report by the ATF, which described assault weapons as creating mass produced mayhem. Assault Weapons Profile 19 (1994). This description is elaborated in the Siebel testimony for the Brady Center: the military features of semiautomatic assault weapons are designed to enhance their capacity to shoot multiple human targets very rapidly and [p]istol grips on assault rifles ... help stabilize the weapon during rapid fire and allow the shooter to spray-fire from the hip position. The same source also suggests assault weapons are preferred by criminals and place law enforcement officers at particular risk ... because of their high firepower, as does the ATF, see Dep't of Treasury, Study on the Sporting Suitability of Modified Semi-automatic Assault Rifles 34-35, 38 (1998). See also Christopher S. Koper et al., U. Penn. Jerry Lee Ctr. of Criminology, An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, at 51, 87 (2004) (assault weapons account for a larger share of guns used in mass murders and murders of police, crimes for which weapons with greater firepower would seem particularly useful, and criminal use of [assault weapons] ... declined after the federal assault weapons ban enacted in 1994 independently of trends in gun crime); id. at 11 (AR-15 type rifles are civilian weapons patterned after the U.S. military's M-16 rifle and were the assault rifles most commonly used in crime before the ban in federal law from 1994 to 2004). Heller suggests M-16 rifles and the like may be banned because they are dangerous and unusual, see 554 U.S. at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783. The Court had previously described the AR-15 as the civilian version of the military's M-16 rifle. Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 603, 114 S.Ct. 1793, 128 L.Ed.2d 608 (1994). Although semi-automatic firearms, unlike automatic M-16s, fire only one shot with each pull of the trigger, id. at 602 n. 1, 114 S.Ct. 1793, semi-automatics still fire almost as rapidly as automatics. See Testimony of Brian J. Siebel, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, at 1 (Oct. 1, 2008) (30-round magazine of UZI was emptied in slightly less than two seconds on full automatic, while the same magazine was emptied in just five seconds on semiautomatic). Indeed, it is difficult to draw meaningful distinctions between the AR-15 and the M-16. See Staples, 511 U.S. at 603, 114 S.Ct. 1793 (Many M-16 parts are interchangeable with those in the AR-15 and can be used to convert the AR-15 into an automatic weapon); Koper, supra, at 4 (AR-15 and other federally banned assault weapons are civilian copies of military weapons and accept ammunition magazines made for those military weapons). In short, the evidence demonstrates a ban on assault weapons is likely to promote the Government's interest in crime control in the densely populated urban area that is the District of Columbia. See Comm. on Pub. Safety, Report on Bill 17-593, at 4 (Nov. 25, 2008) (The District shares the problem of gun violence with other dense, urban jurisdictions). The record also supports the limitation on magazine capacity to ten rounds. The Committee relied upon Siebel's testimony that [t]he threat posed by military-style assault weapons is increased significantly if they can be equipped with high-capacity ammunition magazines because, [b]y permitting a shooter to fire more than ten rounds without reloading, they greatly increase the firepower of mass shooters. See also Koper, supra, at 87 (guns used in shootings are 17% to 26% more likely to have [magazines holding more than ten rounds] than guns used in gunfire cases resulting in no wounded victims); id. at 97 (studies ... suggest that attacks with semi-automaticsincluding [assault weapons] and other semi-automatics with [magazines holding more than ten rounds] result in more shots fired, persons wounded, and wounds per victim than do other gun attacks). The Siebel testimony moreover supports the District's claim that high-capacity magazines are dangerous in self-defense situations because the tendency is for defenders to keep firing until all bullets have been expended, which poses grave risks to others in the household, passersby, and bystanders. Moreover, the Chief of Police testified the 2 or 3 second pause during which a criminal reloads his firearm can be of critical benefit to law enforcement. Overall the evidence demonstrates that large-capacity magazines tend to pose a danger to innocent people and particularly to police officers, which supports the District's claim that a ban on such magazines is likely to promote its important governmental interests. We conclude the District has carried its burden of showing a substantial relationship between the prohibition of both semi-automatic rifles and magazines holding more than ten rounds and the objectives of protecting police officers and controlling crime. Accordingly, the bans do not violate the plaintiffs' constitutional right to keep and bear arms.