LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has joined with 18 other state attorneys general to support a Washington, D.C. ban on high-capacity gun magazines.
The attorneys general filed their friend of the court brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case Hanson v. District of Columbia seeks to overturn a D.C. law that allows firearm magazines to hold up to 10 rounds of ammunition. Anything more than that is banned under the law.
“For the purposes of this subsection, the term ‘large-capacity ammunition feeding device’ means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition,” according to the District of Columbia code.
Nessel joined attorneys general of Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Washington. In the brief, the top lawyers argue the states have a “compelling governmental interest in public safety and crime prevention.”
“There are few interests more paramount to state governments than protecting
public safety, and especially ‘the suppression of violent crime and vindication of its
victims,'” the brief reads in part.
“Gun violence and mass shootings have devastated, and continue to devastate, families in communities all across this country,” said Nessel in a press statement. “Common-sense regulations such as this are well within a state’s scope to legislate. I stand firmly with my colleagues in supporting state’s rights to restrict large-capacity firearm magazines in state law.”
According to Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Michigan does not currently have any restrictions on magazine capacity.
