Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) recently announced that he is leading a 27-state coalition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse an unconstitutional decision from the Washington state Supreme Court banning magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds.
“The Supreme Court needs to step in to uphold Americans’ right to keep and bear arms. Lower courts, including the Washington Supreme Court, are attempting to attack and rewrite the Second Amendment,” said Knudsen. “Washington’s failure to properly interpret the Second Amendment and ban plus-ten magazines ignores both history and constitutional precedent. Law-abiding citizens should not be treated like criminals for exercising their right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. As attorney general, I will continue to do everything in my power to ensure Americans and Montanans can protect themselves.”
The amicus brief from Knudsen and the other attorneys general was filed in the case Gator’s Custom Guns, Inc. v. State of Washington. The Washington state Supreme Court upheld in May the ban on firearm magazines than can contain more than 10 rounds of ammunition after a county superior court judge had struck down the law in 2022. The case also follows the NRA-supported case, Duncan v. Bonta, which challenges California’s similar ban and confiscation of magazines holding more than 10 rounds.
Attorneys general from Idaho, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming, and the Arizona Legislature also joined the brief.
The NRA has also filed an amicus brief in the case.
“The brief emphasizes that this case presents an opportunity for the Court to resolve two key Second Amendment issues dividing lower courts. First, the Court could clarify that magazines are indeed ‘arms’ under the Second Amendment’s plain text, regardless of capacity. And second, the Court could clarify that consideration of whether an arm is ‘common’—as opposed to ‘dangerous and unusual’—is a question of historical tradition rather than textual analysis,” reported the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA).
