On August 3, 2023, Judge Janet Bond Arterton of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut issued a ruling where she upheld that a Connecticut law prohibiting the possession of common semi-automatic rifles and pistols that fall under the category of “assault weapons” and of standard capacity magazines that hold over ten rounds.
Judge Arterton determined that Connecticut’s law does not infringe on the Second Amendment. She does not view the law as unconstitutional, asserting that “assault weapons” and magazines over ten rounds are not weapons that receive Second Amendment. The court refers to magazines which hold over ten rounds as large capacity magazines or “LCM”s.
Atherton concluded that “assault weapons” are used disproportionately in “mass shootings.” However, as Dean Weingarten of AmmoLand observed that mass shootings “are a tiny, almost insignificant subset of criminal use.” In reality, criminals tend to overwhelmingly prefer using handguns in their criminal acts.
Arterton’s ruling is to be expected from an anti-gun jurisdiction like Connecticut. It’s ranked in 45th place according to Guns & Ammo magazine’s best states for gun owners rankings. It will likely take this case going all the way to the Supreme Court in order for this gun grab to be fully struck down.
Sadly, there’s not many avenues for reform in blue states these days.