Bonta, I wanted to jump up, scream “Murica,” salute the flag, hug my ARs, reenlist, watch Red Dawn for the ten-thousandth time, light off fireworks, chug some small-batch bourbon and dance - and I don’t dance! Still, his approach didn’t sit well with Newsom, who said that “as the son of a judge, I grew up with deep respect for the judicial process and the importance of a judge’s ability to make impartial fact-based rulings.After reading United States District Judge Roger T. statistics for 2019, California saw 252 people murdered with a knife, while 34 people were killed with some type of rifle,” AR-15 or otherwise. Dangerfield can feel better about himself now,” Benitez wrote, “because with Proposition 63,” the 2016 ballot initiative that imposed the ammunition background checks at issue, “the Second Amendment gets even less respect than he does.”īenitez took a similar approach in his ruling against the assault weapon ban with his Swiss Army knife line, although the ruling also wielded some choice statistics.īenitez noted that “the banned ‘assault weapons’ are not bazookas, howitzers, or machineguns,” calling them “ordinary, popular, modern rifles” and adding that “according to F.B.I. California’s new ammunition background check law misfires and the Second Amendment rights of California citizens have been gravely injured.”īenitez went on to call the Constitution’s Second Amendment “the Rodney Dangerfield of the Bill of Rights,” a reference to the late comic whose famous laugh line was that he got no respect. In overturning the state’s requirement for background checks to buy bullets, he led off by stating: “The experiment has been tried. “Though injured, the intruder was not incapacitated. “The mother shot six times, hitting the intruder five times, when she ran out of ammunition,” Benitez wrote. He opened his ruling against California’s large-capacity magazine ban by citing cases in which women defending themselves with guns might have wished for more bullets. His recent rulings on California’s gun laws are those for which he is best known. The Poway school ruling was reversed on appeal by the 9th Circuit U.S. In 2010, he ruled in favor of a Poway Unified School District math teacher’s right to display banners in class with patriotic expressions of faith such as “God Bless America” and “In God we Trust,” blasting the district for allowing other diverse religious and anti-religious classroom displays. “All too frequently, while on the bench, Judge Benitez is arrogant, pompous, condescending, impatient, short-tempered, rude, insulting, bullying, unnecessarily mean, and altogether lacking in people skills,” Macias wrote.Įven before his recent string of rulings on Second Amendment cases, Benitez showed a flair for blunt, colorful language and using vignettes and examples to make his points. Macias, writing for the committee, said that “over and over I received negative comments regarding Judge Benitez’ judicial temperament.” The American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary, however, deemed Benitez “not qualified.” California lawyer Richard M. (Courtesy of Thomas Jefferson School of Law) Benitez, a Senior Judge at United States District Court for the Southern District of California. Rivera, a lawyer and former Democratic mayor of Calexico, according to Hatch. “Judge Benitez is fair, rational, intelligent, and just,” said Eduardo A. Hatch said one bipartisan committee recommended Benitez “after a thorough review of his record and experience,” and another bipartisan nominating commission found him to be “highly qualified.” In the span of just a few years, the San Diego senior judge with the colorful and controversial temperament has issued rulings gutting California’s extensive restrictions on gun ownership that are among the strictest in the country, from overturning the state’s ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines in 2019 to blocking the state’s background checks for ammunition buyers in 2020.Īnd each time the state of California has quickly appealed his decisions - as it vows to do again with last week’s ruling - setting up another 2nd Amendment showdown.īut the nomination was not without controversy. “Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment,” the judge wrote, calling the weapon “good for both home and battle.” Benitez wrote the very first sentence in his 94-page bombshell ruling that late last week struck down California’s decades-old ban on military-style “assault weapons,” he wasted no time setting the tone that has endeared him to gun rights advocates and infuriated critics such as Gov.
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