I’m Lance Rankin, a Texas FFL and gunsmith at Western Sport in Roanoke. The video above walks through the Ninth Circuit’s order in Duncan v. Bonta, the California magazine ban case, and it’s worth your time. The legal analysis in the video is the creator’s; what follows is my summary of the ruling plus my own two cents as a dealer who sells the very magazines at issue. This is dated commentary on active litigation, so check where the case stands now before relying on it.
What the court did
Judge Roger Benitez had ruled California’s ban on magazines over ten rounds unconstitutional. The Ninth Circuit stayed that ruling, keeping the ban in force while the state’s appeal plays out. That’s exactly the outcome California asked for.
To grant a stay, a court has to work through a familiar checklist, and the way this panel worked through it is the story. First, likelihood of success: the court wrote that “the Attorney General is likely to succeed on the merits,” citing the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision for the point that the Second Amendment isn’t unlimited, and noting that ten other federal courts had upheld magazine bans since Bruen. Second, harm to the state: the court found California would be “irreparably harmed” without a stay because large-capacity magazines pose threats to public safety, and lifting the ban would let them flood in. Third, harm to everyone else: minimal, said the court, since Californians can still buy guns, ammo, and ten-round magazines.
Why gun owners called foul
Notice what happened in step two. Weighing public-safety benefits against the burden on the right is interest balancing, and interest balancing is precisely the methodology Bruen threw out. Bruen says courts must look at text and historical tradition, not at whether a judge thinks the tradeoff is worth it. Using a balancing test to stay a ruling that faithfully applied Bruen is, at minimum, ironic. And “ten other courts have upheld these bans” is a head count, not an argument; lower courts resisting a Supreme Court decision en masse doesn’t make the resistance correct.
The majority needed only six pages. The dissent ran 35, and judges like Lawrence VanDyke have been openly scathing about how the Ninth Circuit handles Second Amendment cases. When the dissent is nearly six times longer than the order, the court is telling you something about how contested this was.
My take from behind the counter
Standard-capacity magazines, and I use that term deliberately, since 15 to 17 rounds is what these pistols were designed to hold, are owned by the tens of millions for range use, competition, and home defense. Calling them a public-safety emergency while every officer in California carries them is the same contradiction we see in every one of these cases. My honest read: Duncan was always headed above the Ninth Circuit, and whatever has happened since this order, the magazine question ultimately gets settled in Washington, not San Francisco. Read the order and the dissent yourself; the video links them.
In Texas, of course, you can just buy the magazine. If you’re setting up a defensive pistol, my guides on the best home defense handgun and best 9mm defensive ammo are good places to start, and how to buy a gun in Texas covers the basics if you’re new. Questions? [email protected] or 817-393-4000.
Lance Rankin is the owner and Chief Gunsmith of Western Sport, a family-run Type 07 FFL and Class 3/SOT dealer in Roanoke, Texas, serving shooters since 2007. Born and raised in Texas with over 50 years of experience handling firearms, Lance purchased Western Sport in 2017 and turned his lifelong passion into his profession. He specializes in AR-15 and AR-10 platform rifles, manufactures Western Sport’s own AR-15 line under the Rankin Industries brand, and runs the shop’s in-house Cerakote coating operation. When he’s not behind the counter or the workbench, you’ll find him on his ranch deep into the night, hunting coyotes with an AR-15 and thermal optics. Lance holds an MBA and personally shoots and tests the products Western Sport sells.
