HARTFORD, Conn. — A federal decide on Thursday rejected a request to briefly block Connecticut’s landmark 2013 gun management regulation, handed after the Sandy Hook Elementary School capturing, till a gun rights group’s lawsuit towards the statute has concluded.
U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton in New Haven dominated the National Association for Gun Rights has not proven that the state’s ban on sure assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines, or LCMs, violates the 2nd Amendment proper to bear arms or that such weapons are generally purchased and used for self-defense.
Connecticut officers “have submitted persuasive evidence that assault weapons and LCMs are more often sought out for their militaristic characteristics than for self-defense, that these characteristics make the weapons disproportionately dangerous to the public based on their increased capacity for lethality, and that assault weapons and LCMs are more often used in crimes and mass shootings than in self-defense,” Arterton mentioned.
The decide added that “the Nation has a longstanding history and tradition of regulating those aspects of the weapons or manners of carry that correlate with rising firearm violence.”
The National Association for Gun Rights, based mostly in Loveland, Colorado, criticized the ruling and vowed an attraction.
“We’re used to seeing crazy judicial acrobatics to reason the Second Amendment into oblivion, but this ruling is extreme even for leftist courts,” it mentioned in an announcement. “This is an outrageous slap in the face to law-abiding gun owners and the Constitution alike.”
The 2013 regulation was handed after a gunman with an AR-15-style rifle killed 20 youngsters and 6 educators on the Sandy Hook college in Newtown in December 2012. The regulation added greater than 100 firearms, together with the Bushmaster rifle used within the capturing, to the state’s assault weapons ban and prohibited ammunition magazines that maintain greater than 10 rounds.
Previous makes an attempt to overturn the regulation in court docket failed. The affiliation and a Connecticut gun proprietor sued the state in September after a brand new ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court broadly expanded gun rights and led to a rash of rulings invalidating some longstanding restrictions on firearms.
The National Association for Gun Rights mentioned Arterton is refusing to observe the clear steering of that ruling and “twisting the Supreme Court’s words in order to continue a decade-long practice of trampling the Second Amendment as a second-class right.”
Arterton’s ruling means Connecticut’s regulation will stay in impact whereas the lawsuit proceeds in court docket.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, whose workplace is defending the regulation, mentioned the statute is constitutional and broadly supported by the general public.
“We will not allow gun industry lobbyists from outside our state to come here and jeopardize the safety of our children and communities,” Tong mentioned in an announcement.
Gun rights supporters have cited final 12 months’s Supreme Court ruling in difficult different Connecticut gun legal guidelines, together with one handed this 12 months banning the open carrying of firearms. The 2013 regulation is also being challenged by different gun rights supporters in one other lawsuit.
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