Federal judge rules pistols holding more than ten rounds dangerous and unusual
Another Judge that needs to be impeached.
Yesterday, federal district court judge Ricardo Urbina ruled that a DC ordinance banning pistols holding more than ten rounds was constitutional and did not violate the right to bear arms.
After the Supreme Court in 2008 struck down DC’s categorical ban on functional firearms in the home, the city reacted by passing a series of ordinances that it called “Reasonable Regulations.” Basically, in DC, it is currently legal to have a pistol not capable of holding more than ten rounds, in the home, unloaded and either disassembled or with a trigger lock.
Dick Heller, the only plaintiff to make it to the United States Supreme Court in the landmark Heller case, sued the city of DC again over its new regulations, challenging the registration and licensing scheme and the ban on weapons holding more than ten rounds. It is not known why Heller failed to challenge the ordinance requiring weapons to be unloaded and disassembled or locked away.
Judge Urbina, a Clinton appointee, upheld the DC regulations as protecting DC’s “compelling” governmental interest in public safety. He reached this result by refusing to apply a “strict scrutiny” standard of review to the right to keep arms, and instead applying an intermediate standard of review. The difference between the two is significant. A strict scrutiny standard of review is almost always fatal to a government regulation, as the government must prove that the regulation is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest. Failing such a showing, the law will be held unconstitutional. Intermediate review, on the other hand requires only a showing that the regulation is substantially related to an important governmental interest for the regulation to be upheld. As one might expect, this is a much lighter burden for the government. In the words of Judge Urbina, the lower standard of review permits the government to “paint with a broader brush” when imposing restrictions upon a civil right.
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