Skimming through Judge Benitez's very scholarly opinion, it seems that his argument is that the CA magazine limit represents an undue burden on the core of the 2nd Amendment which as dicta indicates in MacDonald and Heller is the defense of home and self (while these decisions did not exclude other such uses nor does either Scotus decision really address carry outside of the home).
Judge Benitez first goes through whether there is a constitutional right protected via Heller, MacDonald, etc. to possess magazines in common use. First, he determines that magazines commonly available in most of the states have higher limits and second, that magazine limits are relatively a new idea promoted by New Jersey in 1990. The State of CA had some embarrassing errors in arguing that that magazine limits dated from the 1930's but Judge Benitez went beyond the cites in the state's brief and discovered all five of CA's examples were those of state laws banning machine guns which had limits on the size of magazine for fully automatic fire with a single pull of the trigger.
Under either strict scrutiny or intermediate scrutiny, the state has the burden of evidence to show that their restriction is both supported by empirical evidence by the state and must either be narrowly tailored (strict) or substantially related (intermediate/heightened) to achieving the state's compelling (strict) or important (intermediate) government objective/interest. Thus, under Heller, larger capacity magazines are in common use and come within the parameters of the 2A protection. Thus, the state providing a limit of ten indicated an arbitrary limit not supported by any evidence for example that ten is safer than eleven which is safer than fifteen, and so forth. The whole tackling issue then would be whether evidence exists that someone trying to stop a mass shooter could more readily stop someone with a mag limit of ten versus eleven or so forth. Thus, speculation is not acceptable when a constitutional right is at stake and the state must provide hard evidence that such a limit actually improves safety.
In his view, the state failed to present sufficient evidence to meet its burden that a) there was empirical evidence to indicate that public safety (both and important and compelling interest fwiw) was improved by the ban and b) even when we assume the facts most favorable to the state regarding AN effect of the ban improving public safety, CA failed to demonstrate that the magazine limit was the most reasonable/effective way to improve public safety while affecting the core 2A right to the least extent possible. It is at this point that Benitez noted that the California decision on mag limits burdens state residents without necessarily improving public safety from mass shooters and thus he finds that the law fails constitutionally.
On page 13, he gets to the heart of his opinion regarding the overly broad magazine ban,
"
1 Absent from these provisions is any qualifying language: all forms of possession
2 by ordinary citizens are summarily criminalized. For example, the statutes make no
3 distinction between possessing and storing a 15-round magazine at home (a reasonable
4 non-threatening act) and carrying a rifle with a 100-round magazine while sitting outside
5 a movie theatre or school (a potentially threatening and suspicious act). Each constitutes
6 criminal possession and is prohibited outright. C.f., Friedman v. City of Highland Park,
7 784 F.3d 406, 417 (7th Cir. 2015) (Manion, J., dissenting) (“Notably absent from this
8 provision is any qualifying language: all forms of possession are summarily prohibited.
9 Other laws notwithstanding, the ordinance makes no distinction between storing large-
10 capacity magazines in a locked safe at home and carrying a loaded assault rifle while
11 walking down Main Street. Both constitute ‘possession’ and are prohibited outright.”
http://michellawyers.com/wp-content...-2019-03-29-Order-Granting-Plaintiffs-MSJ.pdf
J. Benitez then investigates application of relevant three part analysis in the 9th to indicate the level of scrutiny appropriate to analyze the regulation. He concludes that strict scrutiny is necessary under Fyock decision of 2015. However, he takes the state's argument that intermediate scrutiny is the appropriate level and indicates that the ban would still fail under this standard. A)California's incompetent AG argued that no hard empirical evidence was needed to support the mag limit. The AG instead argued that "the required substantial evidence demonstrating a reasonable fit can take other, softer forms such as “history, consensus, and simple
common sense,” as well as “correlation evidence” and even simply “intuition.” And the judge politely ridiculed this argument ironically citing the anti-gun 2nd Circuit case in NY State Rifle v Cuomo in 2015 regarding the Safe Act ) that "To survive intermediate scrutiny, the defendants must show ‘reasonable inferences based on substantial evidence’ that the statutes are substantially related to the governmental interest." J. Benitez then heaps mockery upon the CA AG's use of the Bloomberg funded survey of mass shootings arguing that as AG, certainly he had access to state police reports of those mass shooting occurring in CA and the approximate round count which matters when the state's argument is that the public is safer with the ban than without. He then summarizes the expert witness testimony given and indicates that these individual provide little to support CA's argument of a ten round limit promoting public safety.
On page 74, he addressed the point that BDS was making in the original post--
"
11 In other words, the
12 re-loading “pause” the State seeks in hopes of stopping a mass shooter, also tends to
13 create an even more dangerous time for every victim who must try to defend herself with
14 a small-capacity magazine.
The need to re-load and the lengthy pause that comes with
15 banning all but small-capacity magazines is especially unforgiving for victims who are
16 disabled, or who have arthritis, or who are trying to hold a phone in their off-hand while
17 attempting to call for police help. The good that a re-loading pause might do in the
18 extremely rare mass shooting incident is vastly outweighed by the harm visited on
19 manifold law-abiding, citizen-victims who must also pause while under attack. This
20 blanket ban without any tailoring to these types of needs goes to show § 32310’s lack of
21 reasonable fit.
Under strict or intermediate scrutiny, his argument is that the state's law is overly broad and affects protected rights negatively such as the defense of the home because the state failed to prove that the regulation fit the important government objective of public safety (let alone met the compelling interest and narrowly tailored requirements of strict scrutiny). This decision was tailored to be attractive for the Supreme Court to take up if the 9th decides to reverse his injunction as extending 2A protections to components of firearms necessary to function such as magazines as well as the firearm itself.
