By Steve Gorman
May 6 (Reuters) – The Trump administration sued Colorado on Wednesday seeking to strike down a 13-year-old state ban on large-capacity firearm ammunition magazines, those allowing more than 15 bullets to be fired in rapid succession without the need to re-load.
The lawsuit claims that Colorado’s restriction on gun magazines, enacted in 2013 in the wake of a mass shooting that killed 12 people and wounded 58 others inside an Aurora movie theater, infringes on the right to own and bear arms under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department argues that the rights of law-abiding gun owners are being violated in Colorado precisely because ammunition-feeding devices that hold more than 15 rounds are standard equipment for the most popular firearms in the U.S., numbering in the tens of millions.
Gun safety advocates counter that such high-capacity magazines are what make weapons designed to use them especially deadly in the hands of a mass shooter, enabling the assailant to fire more bullets repeatedly before pausing to reload. People in the line of fire thus have a smaller chance to escape, while law enforcement or bystanders have less time to intervene.
An analysis of mass shootings between 1990 and 2017 found that attacks involving large-capacity magazines resulted in a 62% higher death toll, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health and cited by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
A federal appeals court in 2016 ordered dismissal of a similar case brought by a group of county sheriffs, gun shops, outfitters and shooting ranges challenging the ban on large-capacity magazines and a measure requiring universal background checks for gun buyers.
In that case, a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to bring their suit because they failed to demonstrate that they would have been personally harmed by the laws.
Wednesday’s Department of Justice complaint cites the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision from a landmark case known as the District of Columbia v. Heller, ruling that the Second Amendment protects the rights of law-abiding citizens to possess guns in common use for lawful purposes.
The 11-page DOJ suit, initiated by its civil rights division, argues that magazines holding more than 15 rounds come standard with many of the most popular firearms in the U.S., including AR-15-style rifles and some semi-automatic pistols.
POPULAR AND DEADLY
“The number of lawfully owned semi-automatic firearms in the United States that utilize a magazine like the ones banned by the state is in the tens of millions,” the suit says. Thus, outlawing large-capacity magazines in effect restricts individuals’ rights to own weapons “in common use.”
It adds that such weapons are “used for multiple lawful purposes,” such as recreational target shooting, collecting and self-defense. The lawsuit seeks a court order barring enforcement of the Colorado statute.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser issued a statement vowing to defend the state’s gun-safety measures, and saying the lawsuit “turns the mission of the DOJ’s civil rights division on its head.”
“Large-capacity magazine laws are responsible policies that satisfy Second Amendment protections, decrease impacts of mass shootings and save lives,” Weiser said. “The state has a duty to protect Colorado residents from gun violence.”
The DOJ complaint against Colorado’s large-capacity magazine ban came a day after the department filed a separate lawsuit challenging a long-standing Denver city ordinance banning semi-automatic rifles it defines as assault weapons.
Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have banned large-capacity magazines, most restricting ammunition-feeding devices to 10 bullets, others like Colorado to 15 rounds, while Delaware allows no more than 17 rounds, according to the Giffords Law Center. Most of those restrictions were enacted as part of a wider ban on firearms defined as assault weapons.
But Colorado and three other states – Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont – have banned large-capacity magazines alone.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Stephen Coates)
