BELLEVUE, Wash. — Sept. 12, 2025 — The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court urging the court to grant certiorari in Duncan v. Bonta, a case challenging California’s ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
SAF is joined in the amicus filing by the Second Amendment Law Center and Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus.
“The Ninth Circuit’s en banc ruling defies the Supreme Court’s precedents in Heller, Bruen and Rahimi by wrongly concluding that magazines that hold more than 10 rounds are not ‘arms’ under the Second Amendment’s plain text,” said SAF Director of Legal Research and Education Kostas Moros. “The Ninth Circuit based its historical analysis on overly generalized historical analogues like bowie knife restrictions, while ignoring closer 19th-century examples like revolvers and repeating rifles, which were never restricted. We hope the Supreme Court intervenes to protect the rights of millions of law-abiding gun owners facing dispossession or worse.”
The brief explains that magazines are “arms” under the plain text of the Second Amendment as essential components of modern firearms that facilitate armed self-defense. To regulate them, the government must demonstrate a historical tradition of such restrictions, which does not exist. The brief also addresses how the Ninth Circuit’s approach distorts Bruen’s framework by inflating the plain-text inquiry and using overly broad analogies, and highlights the court’s pattern of undermining Second Amendment rights through en banc reversals.
“This case is critical because it goes to the heart of protecting commonly owned arms that millions of Americans rely on for self-defense, which includes standard-capacity magazines for handguns and rifles,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Through amicus briefs and our ongoing litigation, we’re fighting to restore Second Amendment protections nationwide and ensure that lower courts faithfully apply the Supreme Court’s precedents rather than defy them.”
For more information, or to register, visit SAF.org.
The Second Amendment Foundation (saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group dedicated to safeguarding and promoting the fundamental rights of individuals enshrined in the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. SAF engages in aggressive legal action to ensure the principles of armed self-defense, personal liberty, and the ownership of arms are defended, secured, and restored. Through public education initiatives, SAF teaches the importance of the Second Amendment to promote a society that values and exercises the right to keep and bear arms
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