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

Heading: Assault Weapons and Large-Capacity Magazines

Text: Because the plaintiffs fail to present an argument in their briefs questioning the constitutionality of the ban on semi-automatic pistols and shotguns, see page 1249 footnote  above, we construe the plaintiffs' challenge to the ban on assault weapons as going only to the prohibition of certain semi-automatic rifles. We are not aware of evidence that prohibitions on either semi-automatic rifles or large-capacity magazines are longstanding and thereby deserving of a presumption of validity. [] For the court to determine whether these prohibitions are constitutional, therefore, we first must ask whether they impinge upon the right protected by the Second Amendment. That is, prohibiting certain arms might not meaningfully affect individual self-defense, [which] is `the central component ' of the Second Amendment right. McDonald, 130 S.Ct. at 3036, 130 S.Ct. 3020 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 599, 128 S.Ct. 2783). Of course, the Court also said the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for other lawful purposes, such as hunting, but self-defense is the core lawful purpose protected, Heller, 554 U.S. at 630, 128 S.Ct. 2783. The Court in Heller, as mentioned above at page 1252, recognized yet another limitation on the right to keep and carry arms, namely that the sorts of weapons protected are those `in common use at the time' for lawful purposes like self-defense. Id. at 624, 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783. The Court found this limitation fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of `dangerous and unusual weapons.' Id. at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Because the prohibitions at issue, unlike the registration requirements, apply only to particular classes of weapons, we must also ask whether the prohibited weapons are typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, id. at 625, 128 S.Ct. 2783; if not, then they are not the sorts of Arms protected by the Second Amendment.
The plaintiffs contend semi-automatic rifles, in particular the AR variants, are commonly possessed for self-protection in the home as well as for sport. They also argue magazines holding more than ten rounds are commonly possessed for self-defense and for other lawful purposes and that the prohibition of such magazines would impose a burden upon them. Specifically, they point out that without a large-capacity magazine it would be necessary, in a stressful situation, to pause in order to reload the firearm. The District, by contrast, argues neither assault weapons nor weapons with large-capacity magazines are among the Arms protected by the Second Amendment because they are both dangerous and unusual, Heller, 554 U.S. at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (internal quotation marks omitted), and because prohibiting them minimally burdens the plaintiffs; hence the District maintains the bans are constitutional. The Committee on Public Safety received evidence that assault weapons are not useful for the purposes of sporting or self-defense, but rather are military-style weapons designed for offensive use. See generally Testimony of Brian J. Siebel, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence (Oct. 1, 2008). The Committee concluded assault weapons have no legitimate use as self-defense weapons, and would in fact increase the danger to law-abiding users and innocent bystanders if kept in the home or used in self-defense situations. Report on Bill 17-843, at 7 (Nov. 25, 2008). The District likewise contends magazines holding more than ten rounds are disproportionately involved in the murder of law enforcement officers and in mass shootings, and have little value for self-defense or sport. It cites the Siebel testimony, which relies upon a report of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) stating that semi-automatic rifles with large-capacity magazines are not suitable for sporting purposes. The District also reasons that the usefulness of large-capacity magazines for self-defense in rare circumstances does not mean the burden imposed upon the plaintiffs is more than minimal. We think it clear enough in the record that semi-automatic rifles and magazines holding more than ten rounds are indeed in common use, as the plaintiffs contend. Approximately 1.6 million AR-15s alone have been manufactured since 1986, and in 2007 this one popular model accounted for 5.5 percent of all firearms, and 14.4 percent of all rifles, produced in the U.S. for the domestic market. As for magazines, fully 18 percent of all firearms owned by civilians in 1994 were equipped with magazines holding more than ten rounds, and approximately 4.7 million more such magazines were imported into the United States between 1995 and 2000. There may well be some capacity above which magazines are not in common use but, if so, the record is devoid of evidence as to what that capacity is; in any event, that capacity surely is not ten. Nevertheless, based upon the record as it stands, we cannot be certain whether these weapons are commonly used or are useful specifically for self-defense or hunting and therefore whether the prohibitions of certain semi-automatic rifles and magazines holding more than ten rounds meaningfully affect the right to keep and bear arms. We need not resolve that question, however, because even assuming they do impinge upon the right protected by the Second Amendment, we think intermediate scrutiny is the appropriate standard of review and the prohibitions survive that standard.
As we did in evaluating the constitutionality of certain of the registration requirements, we determine the appropriate standard of review by assessing how severely the prohibitions burden the Second Amendment right. Unlike the law held unconstitutional in Heller, the laws at issue here do not prohibit the possession of the quintessential self-defense weapon, to wit, the handgun. 554 U.S. at 629, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Nor does the ban on certain semi-automatic rifles prevent a person from keeping a suitable and commonly used weapon for protection in the home or for hunting, whether a handgun or a non-automatic long gun. See Gary Kleck & Marc Gertz, Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun, 86 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 150, 185 (1995) (revolvers and semi-automatic pistols are together used almost 80% of the time in incidents of self-defense with a gun); Dep't of Treasury, Study on the Sporting Suitability of Modified Semiautomatic Assault Rifles 38 (1998) (semi-automatic assault rifles studied are not generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes). Although we cannot be confident the prohibitions impinge at all upon the core right protected by the Second Amendment, we are reasonably certain the prohibitions do not impose a substantial burden upon that right. As the District points out, the plaintiffs present hardly any evidence that semi-automatic rifles and magazines holding more than ten rounds are well-suited to or preferred for the purpose of self-defense or sport. Cf. Kleck & Gertz, supra, at 177 (finding that of 340,000 to 400,000 instances of defensive gun use in which the defenders believed the use of a gun had saved a life, 240,000 to 300,000 involved handguns). Accordingly, we believe intermediate rather than strict scrutiny is the appropriate standard of review. In this we agree with the reasoning of the Third Circuit in Marzzarella. The court there applied intermediate scrutiny to the prohibition of unmarked firearms in part because it thought the ban was similar to a regulation of the manner in which... speech takes place, a type of regulation subject to intermediate scrutiny under the time, place, and manner doctrine of the First Amendment. 614 F.3d at 97. Notably, because the prohibition left a person free to possess any otherwise lawful firearm, the court reasoned it was more accurately characterized as a regulation of the manner in which persons may lawfully exercise their Second Amendment rights. Id. Here, too, the prohibition of semi-automatic rifles and large-capacity magazines does not effectively disarm individuals or substantially affect their ability to defend themselves. See Volokh, supra, at 1471 (where content-neutral speech restrictions are involved, restrictions that impose severe burdens (because they don't leave open ample alternative channels) must be judged under strict scrutiny, but restrictions that impose only modest burdens (because they do leave open ample alternative channels) are judged under a mild form of intermediate scrutiny).
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.