Although Benitez surely knows that the United States has a long history of vigilantism and mob violence, he doesn’t say which informal groups of armed citizens in this country might qualify and which would not. The examples he offers include the armed partisans led by Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents. While distinguishing a citizen militia from a “ state-organized militia,” the judge is vague about what, exactly, a citizen militia is.
California’s defense was that assault weapons are more dangerous than other firearms and therefore subject to additional restrictions.īenitez accepts this individual right, including to own assault weapons, but he adds what he calls “citizen militias” to the mix, which he defines as an “informal assembly of able-bodied, ordinary citizens acting in concert for the security of our nation.” The AR-15, he says, is an “ ideal arm” for such purposes. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit claimed that California’s assault weapons ban unconstitutionally restricted citizens’ Second Amendment rights by preventing them from using assault weapons for home defense and other legal purposes. But the case raises troubling questions about the meaning and proper role of “militias” under the Second Amendment. Most coverage has focused on Benitez’s provocative analogy between an AR-15 and a Swiss army knife. District Court Judge Roger Benitez, does not take effect immediately, because California has 30 days to appeal the rejection of its assault weapons ban. When a federal judge in California struck down the state’s 32-year-old ban on assault weapons in early June 2021, he added a volatile new issue to the gun-rights debate. But it is hard to envision the justices using this case as a vehicle to establish a constitutional right to buy AR-15s now that Benitez has tainted it with lunacy.The Second Amendment declares the importance of state-government authorized militias, like these National Guard troops guarding the California State Capitol building. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the median justice in terms of ideology, wrote that the District of Columbia’s assault weapon ban is unconstitutional while serving on the Court of Appeals. This Supreme Court is undoubtedly eager to expand the Second Amendment. If there is any upside to this decision, though, it is that Benitez’s delusions undermine his own credibility. Benitez presumably hopes that the Supreme Court’s new conservative supermajority will erase this caveat and embrace his radical interpretation of the right to bear arms. Heller, the Supreme Court explicitly acknowledged that “M-16 rifles and the like” may be banned, and the AR-15 is extremely similar to the M-16. Other federal courts have found that assault weapon bans are perfectly constitutional. But it’s worth noting that, rhetorical excess aside, Benitez’s bottom line is an outlier, too. These peculiar asides take Benitez far outside the mainstream of the federal judiciary-which, despite Donald Trump’s influence, has not yet deteriorated to this new low. John Roberts Can’t Admit What’s Happened to the Supreme Court The Perverse, Potentially Lethal Consequences of Lindsey Graham’s Federal Abortion Ban Roberts and Kavanaugh Issue a Surprise Warning Shot to Conservative Lawyers Mary Trump on How Her Uncle Keeps Getting Away With It Despite this record of slaughter, Benitez wrote that “contrary to public misinformation, mass shooting events are rare events.” Benitez added, “More people have died from the Covid-19 vaccine than mass shootings in California.” Notably, the weapon was also used in the 2015 San Bernardino attack, which killed 14 Californians.
In reality, the AR-15-style rifle, the quintessential assault weapon, was used in many of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings, including in Boulder, Las Vegas, Aurora, Sutherland Springs, Pittsburgh, and Sandy Hook a nearly identical rifle was also used in the Pulse massacre. Benitez spilled a great deal of ink arguing that mass shootings involving assault weapons are “infinitesimally rare.” (At the same time, he argued California’s assault weapon ban has utterly failed to limit mass shootings, a contradiction he never attempts to square.) The judge reached his conclusion by discounting experts’ methods of counting mass shootings. COVID vaccines are more dangerous than assault weapons. Benitez is widely known as a crank to attorneys who have tried cases in front of him.ġ.
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