ar-15 assault weapon AK
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

[UCLA law professor Adam] Winkler interprets both the Heller opinion and a 1939 court ruling — United States vs. Miller — as broadly protecting firearms currently in common use. That ruling regulated sawed-off shotguns and machine guns.

“Benitez’s opinion was unnecessarily provocative,” Winkler says. “If nothing else, it was totally tone-deaf comparing Swiss Army knives to rifles.”

But the opinion’s conclusion was “certainly plausible,” Winkler continued. “It’s an opinion that’s likely to win over a number of justices on the Supreme Court.

“Really, these weapons weren’t commonplace 20 to 30 years ago — and when California’s law was first enacted. But military-style rifles have become quite common.”

The Supreme Court has presumably become more pro-gun with three appointees by former President Trump. Conservatives now hold a 6-3 majority. Also, the once-liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — where Benitez’s ruling is being appealed — has become more moderate, with several justices named by Trump.

“It’s likely that the Supreme Court is going to expand 2nd Amendment protections in coming years and that means striking down gun laws,” Winkler says.

— George Skelton in The ruling overturning California’s assault weapon ban was nutty. But it may be on solid legal ground

 

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

86 COMMENTS

  1. In my local rag, The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA), or as I call it The Virginian-Pravda, there are continuous anti-gun stories of some nature or another. It’s part and parcel of the communists agenda to condition the people to accept “common-sense” restrictions on the 2nd and then the rest of the Bill of Rights eventually making the entire constitution moot. I have no faith that SCOTUS will do anything beyond Heller and it will eventually become a dead letter.

    • But something has changed. Justice Barrett has taken her seat on the bench. There are now 5 pro-2A justices. And, that 5th justice makes the difference between night and day.

      To be sure, SCOTUS has a limited amount of bandwidth. They can’t take all the 2A cases at the expense of eschewing other cases. Moreover, they have (or ought to have) an objective: Making their holdings withstand future onslaughts on stare dicisis.

      My guess is that the 5 justices want to take cases in a sequence that will serve to support a doctrine that is interwoven in such a way that it will be difficult to rent by a future court. Attempts to do so would cast shadows on too many other sacred aspects of our Constitution and prior rulings.

      Whether any particular case is perceived by these 5 as foundational or in the desired sequence is anyone’s guess. They didn’t seem to so regard the “as applied” cases that recently came before them.

      Once we see Corlett’s holdings the lay of the battlefield will likely become clearer.

      We still have a long way to go with Benitez’s ‘Assault Weapons’ ruling. It needs to be ruled on by a 9th Circuit panel and thereupon ruled on by the 9th Circuit en banc. That will drag-out beyond Corlett. Then, we will see what the issues are as they will have been framed by the 9th Circuit. Perhaps, as with Young, the 9th Circuit will stake-out a position that SCOTUS will decide can not be left to stand. It MUST be overturned, and promptly. Conversely, if the 9th Circuit will take a more clever approach which SCOTUS will prefer to ignore for a while.

      Ultimately, I disagree with your conclusion. We gained nothing other than Caetano since McDonald. But with 5 pro-2A justices on the bench, and only so long as this majority prevails, we have the opportunity to get traction. And we must support worthy cases so they get in the pipeline for appeal to SCOTUS.

      • Since that SCOTUS you refer to refused to hear any cases out of the last election on the grounds that it exceeded their constitutional authority, I’d be interested to see if they strike down HR1 as unconstitutional….. If not, then this SCOTUS is nothing more than an other kangaroo court and I’ll have no faith in their ability to correctly/consistently rule on gun cases.

        • I’m beginning to have a lot less confidence in SCOTUS in general, let alone them taking a real 2A case.
          I thought Barrett was a great choice and now I’m beginning to have serious doubts.
          Why would Biden pack a court with already what appears to already be a pretty liberal bunch of justices?

    • “Tell a lie long enough and people will believe it”

      did that work in the soviet union?

      • The Soviets brutally crushed dissent for about 80 years. That’s how well it worked in the old USSR. Something Leftist Scum like you want to do here, now.

        We won’t let you.

        Now, on to other things –

        I will clarify my comment to you yesterday when you mentioned the 2A only applies to 17th-century firearms, like muskets.

        Here is what Antonin Scalia said in the ‘Heller’ decision :

        “Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35-36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” D.C. v. Heller (2008)

        Refute that, ‘ant’… 😉

        • “The Soviets brutally crushed dissent for about 80 years. That’s how well it worked in the old USSR.”

          so what you’re saying is the lies didn’t work even after 80 years of repetition. very good.

          so. why didn’t they work?

        • “The Soviets brutally crushed dissent for about 80 years. That’s how well it worked in the old USSR.”

          so what you’re saying is that the lies didn’t work, even after 80 years of repetition. very good.

          so. why didn’t they work?

        • “We won’t let you”

          I’m glad. good for you. but since “you” stood by and “allowed” a united states presidential election to be blatantly stolen (that being simply the latest in a long train of abuses and usurpations) you’ll excuse us if we don’t take such statements too seriously.

          especially that “we” part. my observation has been that modern rightists simply do not cohere.

        • “I will clarify my comment to you yesterday when you mentioned the 2A only applies to 17th-century firearms, like muskets.”

          didn’t say that. said it was written in that context. “self defense” (whether in the context of personal defense or state militia defense) necessarily implies access to the tools of self-defense, and for citizens in modern times this implies 15’s and other such. what I pointed out is that the tools have advanced beyond anything conceived of at the time the 2nd was written – that a 15’s capability for highly consequential misuse (whether intentional or unintentional) far and away exceeds that of a knife or a sword or a muzzle loader – and that furthermore the social and cultural context of the time of the 2nd which would have restrained improper use of a knife/sword/muzzleloader no longer exists to restrain improper use of a 15 – and that given this change in capability and culture some people ought not to have access to such capability. for example recently in the gunfight in austin two thugs open fire on each other and hit six bystanders but apparently not each other. I asked several times whether there were people who a priori should not have access to such capability. at the time I left yesterday no-one had said “yes” or “no” despite being asked several times. clearly no-one wants to consider the issue or answer the question at all, they would rather mischaracterize it so as to fit it into their pre-existing self-justifying meme and from there dismiss it. this is perfectly understandable – such people care only for their own freedom of action and don’t care about how this fits into the rest of society because they see themselves as isolates and society as their enemy and not something they live in. that is why no-one would say “yes” – because they cannot tolerate any possible intrusion on their isolation – and why no-one would say “no” – because saying so identifies them as isolates and not citizens.

        • which reminds me. do you think participation in a well-regulated militia plays any role in the 2nd amendment?

        • I’ll answer that one: Yes, it does, because the uninfringed right of the people to keep and bear arms is what makes the entire militia concept possible.

          And the federal government has been unforgivably derelict in its duty in that regard. Not only does it infringe on the core right at every opportunity, it has utterly failed to provide any means by which militias can be trained and organized.

  3. To have such as thing on the books as The 1968 Gun Control Act is an abomination and adds insult to injury for those who met their end at the hands of Gun Control. Here in the USA on the books is an Act that is rooted in racism and genocide. And where is the outrage? To provide cover for Gun Control the outage is purposely directed towards inanimate statues and things that cannot hold a candle to what has been left in the wake of Gun Control.

    Until Gun Control is despised in America as much as a noose, slave shacks and burning crosses the democRat Party will continue to sugarcoat it and feed it to their pathetic, history illiterate useful idiots who stand for nothing and fall for anything.

    • “the democRat Party will continue to sugarcoat it and feed it to their pathetic, history illiterate useful idiots who stand for nothing and fall for anything”

      you don’t understand them at all. their goal of “gun control” is to take YOUR guns, not theirs. they know exactly what they’re doing and they completely understand it and they’re all for it.

      • ” they know exactly what they’re doing and they completely understand it and they’re all for it.”

        It will not turn out the way they believe it will, in the end. At first, maybe, but things will change.

        When a certain ‘tipping point’ is reached, there will be great sadness.

        On the upside, things will eventually become much more affordable… 🙂

    • Debbie W, the same can be said for the NFA of 1934. The “problems” the NFA supposedly addressed were problems created by the very same government vis-a-vis “Prohibition.” The government opened the door for Organized Crime, and what was a local/regional problem went nationwide as a direct consequence of stupid think. The end result was Law Abiding Gun Owners were spanked for the government’s screwing of the pooch. It’s been their tactic ever since, to pass laws that have no impact on so called Gun Violence, and infringe upon lawful ownership by the law abiding.

  4. Expect a ramping up of the MSM manufacturing consent and piling on the “OMG, gunz!” stories fully free of any detail or information other than gun=bad.

    Look to the recent mask-mandate enforcement shooting as an example. Almost no outlet bothered to write up any details or show a mugshot so some unhinged multi-felon lashing out because of “disrespek” becomes anti-mask zealot (read: Republican) in Georgia (read: racist South) murdering poor minimum wage worker for trying to keep everyone safe (read: Karen).

    This will be every instance of a firearm existing during any action for the foreseeable future.

    • “’OMG, gunz!’ stories fully free of any detail or information other than gun=bad”

      is that any change from present practice?

    • The line of defense I believe most gun-ban activists want to hang their hats on is in the ERPO arena. Public firearms ownership is not going away anytime soon. Some states make it difficult to impossible to own modern firearms but if the ban people can get some relative/neighbor/spouse/wtf-ever to make up “evidence” and no hearing is needed to disarm average people, they will have become very effective in moving the goalposts.

      We have to remember that the Left/progressives are very patient- they’ll gladly take years to keep moving things left a bit at the time in the “boiling frog” concept. This has been going on now since the late 1960s and no one on that side is giving up even though the Constitution and the American citizens have made some remarkable gains in ownership and actual gun bearing and self-protection over the past 15 years or so.

      For the first 10-15 years of this push to turn th US into “the rest of the world”, most Americans couldn’t believe their own government would really seek to disarm them and then-ban proponents always veiled their intentions in “safety” and “common sense”. Once they won a few victories at our expense, however, enough of them started speaking in more bold, confiscatory terms and some of us could begin to see through what they were doing and decided to fight back.

      Probably “our” greatest weakness is the lack of patience. Some of us expected 60-some years of leftward, socialist drift to be cancelled in one stroke of the pen. Harris/Biden/Chipman or not, the surge and advantage is still on the side of the Second Amendment and if we’re patient and don’t paint ourselves into a corner where it is all-or-nothing, as many in the “No-Compromise” groups want, we can come out stronger than ever in a few more years. Compromise, in the face of certain defeat is not a bad thing unless one really wants to be a dead/incarcerated martyr. When the semiauto ban was sure to pass regardless of what NRA, GOA or Americans wanted. being sure to tie it with a sunset amendment and definition of an “assault weapon” negated its affect and once the sunset came to be, we have millions of far better options now available than anyone could’ve foreseen in 1993. Without that, and yes, it was a compromise, we’d have had all AR 15s and most every semiauto banned, collected, and chopped in two now since 1994.

      For certain, general cynical and defeatist commentary around here and elsewhere is useless except to provide some people, who are often, for the most part, disengaged from the real battle, the ability to go around afterwards saying “I told you so” should things take a wrong turn.

      https://youtu.be/wX3hRj6XoUM
      https://youtu.be/0OHH49vtl2g

      • “Left/progressives are very patient- they’ll gladly take years to keep moving things left a bit”

        generations.

        “This has been going on now since the late 1960s”

        in every generation.

      • I do not compromise my rights, nor am I patient when others infringe. The taker can be patient, as they lose nothing in waiting. The person who is robbed of rights loses and suffers immediately and for the duration. Screw patience, take it all back. Now.

  5. Please, everyone…let’s stop referring to the current Court as a “6-3 conservative majority”. Roberts is no lover of conservatism or the Constitution. At best, it’s a tenuous 5-4 right now.

    Stop giving Roberts any credit where it isn’t due.

    • Please remember that this ‘man’ could have stood up for the Constitution on 1/6 Freedom Day, but he chose to stay at home, as cowards are wont to do…

    • In my opinion, only Alito and Thomas are tried, trusted, true friends of the 2A. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, I have hope for, but they’re still unproven at SCOTUS level jurisprudence.

      To be fair to Roberts, he was with us from Heller through Abramski, where Kennedy’s flip enshrined the disastrously bad case law regarding “straw purchases”. After that, the 4 remaining conservatives stopped voting for cert on 2A cases.

      One thing is for sure, the left has lit their hair on fire over Judge Benitez’s opinion. I suppose that’s a good thing. 🙂

        • It’s in the Ninth Circuit now, so will have ramifications for all the Western States.

      • The ruling says nothing about whether Obamacare is still a tax without the individual mandate. They ruled the states had no standing to bring the case since they weren’t affected by the individual mandate. If a state wants to challenge Obamacare, they need to force standing. They should violate it and get sued over it. If a state announces Ovamacare is now unconstitutional without the mandate, they no longer need to perform the state actions of providing exchanged, or doing so under their rules that don’t follow Obamacare, like offering low cost catastrophic insurance instead of expensive full coverage. Someone would sue to make them give federally mandated benefits, or the feds would impose some penalty, like withholding funds. Either way, the state would then have a financial involvement and must have standing, although that doesn’t mean they’ll make it back to the Supreme Court. It’s kind of like why getting a gun case heard is so hard. Suing because I don’t want to be restricted by NFA will probably not be heard, but getting arrested for violating NFA will at least get me a day in court to argue its constitutionality, at the risk of a felony and years in jail.

        • “They should violate it and get sued over it”

          free stuff is self-reinforcing – lots of people depend on o-care, lost of medical institutions get lots of funding from it, and lots of politicians get lots of votes for supporting it. can any state simply drop it?

      • Since doctors and medical institutions actually get screwed over by it, they could probably drop it if they wish. It is basically nothing more then Medicaid on steroids with horrible benefits.

        An MD can decide whether on not they accept Medicare. The thing is they have to get rid of ALL Medicare patients they have, they aren’t allowed ONE.

        The reimbursements are a joke but it is far from “free stuff”. The problem with Medicare is what part B covers, actual reimbursements and the time it takes to get reimbursed.

        Can a state drop Obozocare? Not likely, any part of your bill that isn’t covered under Obozocare will usually be picked up by that states Medicaid system but not always. Obozocare is not cheap but the quality of care is horrible.

        I doubt a state could drop it and get sued over it but doctors can. I pay my specialists cash, even though that’s out of pocket money the quality of care is much better. My orthopedist and ophthalmologist come to mind. They could wait 6 months to get payment of my Obozocare at greatly reduced rates or they can accept cash at the time of service.

        IOWs let the hospital accept $300 for a $4000 MRI from Obozocare but when it comes to treatment pay cash directly to the orthopedist. Anyone who has torn up their rotater cuff badly knows what I’m saying, it hurts like hell and under Obozocare you are lucky to even see a specialist. It’s worth the $100 out of pocket to get it shot up, that reduces the inflammation and hence the pain.

        All of this is subjective but most 40 year olds don’t have $200 a week for a “Platinum” plan which still leaves you with a 10% copay. “Bronze plans” have a 40% copay.
        It’s a sick joke.

    • “Roberts is no lover of conservatism or the Constitution. At best, it’s a tenuous 5-4 right now.

      Stop giving Roberts any credit where it isn’t due.”

      Preach it, as seen today when Roberts agreed the blatantly un-constitutional ACA will stand…

      • I’ll simplify it. Roberts is a chode who is a RINO.
        Since Obama came up with the ACA, Roberts will always let it stand.
        He’s more of a conservative the Ginsburg was.

        • I CARE.

          Alito and Gorsuch dissented in a 7-2 decision on a law that no legislators read before they voted for it.
          It’s a bad law/tax that enriches the insurance companies, crap coverage for crap insurance.
          “31 million Americans have access health insurance through the ACA.”
          The USA has a population of roughly 330 million.
          My employer pays for my “Platinum” plan which is terrible compared to when I had BC/BS. Trump should have repealed the ACA the day he took office.

          At least it still covers Biden’s Alzheimer’s “Robell” or should I say “Miner”.

    • Right on re: the Dread Justice Roberts! What a disappointment that sucker turned out to be…

  6. Food for thought: If we add enough unregistered machine guns into circulation to the point they become “common use”, we can strike down the NFA under the same argument.

      • “the numbers aren’t comparable…”

        Yes, it does, considering how easy it will be to convert the stocks of existing 20-million strong ‘Modern Sporting Rifles’ into a select-fire configuration… 🙂

    • “If we add enough unregistered machine guns into circulation to the point they become ‘common use'”

      at $2 a bullet it’ll be tough getting to that “common use” part ….

      • You haven’t read today’s business news. China has agreed to liquidate stores of copper to ease price increases…

    • Machine guns are in common by the Military. This never should of been an issue. The other issue I see with “common use” is how would it allow new technology say lasers or what not to become “common use”. This sort of circular reasoning got us into this trouble in the first place.

    • Walked into a local gun store yesterday and sitting on the counter was a Vietnam era M-60. $40,000.

    • Possessing an unregistered machine gun is a federal offense that will be prosecuted sending you to prison. the firearm will be seized and destroyed. I have read that a mechanical malfunction in a semiautomatic AR that allowed it to fire a burst of rounds, notwithstanding that it was unintentional and the gun was immediately taken off the range, resulted in charges being filed. So no, there is no feasible way for machine guns to be “in common use” absent elimination of the NFA.

      • One of my ARs (I’ve built them all from kits and 80% lowers) experienced “double tap” over half the time the trigger was pressed as I tested it while out in the desert. Kept doing it through about 100 rds. Single, double, single, double, double, etc.

        Swapped out the trigger for a spare (always, ALWAYS have spare parts for your guns) and the problem immediately went away and never happened again. Tossed the old trigger in the trash.

    • So far, so much better. You can’t entirely get away from the evil Masters of the Universe — DuckDuckGo uses the Bing engine made by Microsoft — but you can certainly do better. I went with DDG and the Brave browser (built on Chrome) years ago and haven’t looked back.

      • ^^^^ This, so much this. I’ve been running the same for years. Firefox or Opera are also Chrome alternatives that aren’t as spying, but aren’t as privacy oriented as Brave.

  10. “comparing Swiss Army knives to rifles.”

    I cracks me up when so many of the leftards say Judge Benitez compared the MSR to a Swiss Army Knife. I read the original script as comparing the UTILITY of the two items.

    But then again, maybe I just can’t interpret correctly….

    • “maybe I just can’t interpret correctly….”

      it’s easy. “interpret” means “reading in the result I want regardless of what the text actually says”. can see it being done in any christian church in most theological discussions, and pretty much most other places too.

  11. Benitez was using the Swiss-Army knife as a comparison of popularity (ubiquitous-ness), modularity and role-adaptability…not a direct literal 1:1 comparison.

    Then again, only the hyper-sensitive, background anxiety-riddled folks now cropping up into physical maturity (I distinctly avoid using the term “adulthood” here for, what should be, obvious reasons) tend to oversimplify an already exceedingly simple, abstract concept such as comparing two things regarding the populace’s familiarity with something, how easy something is for the end-user to change its form/layout to suit their needs, and just how many different roles something could be effectively filling.

    Nope: “This thing isn’t the same as that thing, I’m offended!”

    Smoothbrains, the lot of ’em.

    • BINGO! I was thinking the same thing. Those of us who own guns see the AR as a platform.
      We can do a lot of things with this modular platform.
      So yes it is a very good literal 1:1 comparison.

  12. “The ruling overturning California’s assault weapon ban was nutty. But it may be on solid legal ground.”

    hen. “solid legal ground” == “nutty”.

    • Brought to you by the sorts of people that advocate for psychiatric evaluations as a prerequisite for gun ownership.

      • Winkler’s statement that these guns weren’t in common use 20 or 30 years ago exposes the hypocrisy of the law Commifornia passed 32 years ago. Why did you need the law then, if it wasn’t that big of a problem 20 -30 years ago? It wasn’t a problem then, and it isn’t a problem now.
        The statistics don’t show an increase of isolated MSR’s use in crimes anymore now than the isolated use of MSR’s 32 years ago. It’s still a statistically insignificant number of criminal acts involving MSR’s. So insignificant, the FBI lumps MSR’s in with Bolt Action, Pump, Lever Action and Single Shot rifles.
        Just like the Bump Stock Ban, it was done in response to ONE incident, not due to an increasing trend.

  13. I do have hope. I like to be an optimist.
    There is no doubt that we are in a better position now then previously.
    The court is moving in a method to save their own skins with unanimous votes leaning both ways.
    The filling by state AG’s lacked standing, which means go back and try again. They didn’t say that they were wrong.
    They also sided with a Catholic foster agency in Philadelphia for a conservative win.
    In the California case, it is probably one of the best laid out, and planned cases of our time. They referenced the right materials in the right way.
    It still needs to hit an appellate court then an En Banc review before it is ever even given to SCOTUS. If California was smart they would shut up and take the L.
    Taking this to a presumably pro 2A court could create a precedent which would destroy all the other “bans” in all the other states overnight. Of course this is what we want, but it would be a huge hit to the gun control industrial complex.
    Then again the zealots in California will never stop. They are so deranged for unarming people that they have no sense of reality anymore.

    • “The court is moving in a method to save their own skins with unanimous votes leaning both ways.”

      Unfortunately, you may be correct to some degree, but it should never, ever be that way. Each Justice is sworn upon taking office to uphold the Constitution. That’s it. No politics, no CYA, no posturing. However the political chips may fall, the only influence on a Justice’s review of a matter should be “how does this align with Constitution?”

      ****
      A few years ago, one of our Democrat State Representatives in Sacramento was partaking in self-congratulatory motions and made the statement to reporters, “Our colleagues in D.C. are looking to us, and we must show them we know how to deal with this matter.”

      No, dummy, your job (as is the job of every Representative at every State and Federal level) is not to lead, but to represent your constituents who elected you to vote on their behalf, for the things that matter to them at home. That’s it. That’s all.

      Panderers, all of them.

    • The anti-freedom, anti-human zealots of all stripes will never stop, which is one reason we have a Bill Of Rights appended to the US Constitution.. generation after generation, country after country, time and time again the foes of individual liberty crop up with the same attacks on freedom and justice, in different forms perhaps but with the same design in mind.. enslaving the population to the whims of one autocracy or another. As the Founders knew, the Majority must often be prevented from trampling the rights of the Minority..

  14. Miller really needs to be reexamined, any court decision where there is no evidence submitted by the defense should not be considered good case law.
    IIRC nobody so much as submitted a brief for the defense.

  15. “Nutty”

    Kinda like breaking away from Britain and forming a republic that became the greatest nation on earth.

    I’ll take nutty that keeps the government in check.

  16. That Miller will be delayed in the Ninth (for some years) is not a bad thing in the overall scheme of things. The Court will first decide whether the State can license concealed carry, and although the limited question being answered doesn’t say it, the fact that open carry is prohibited is certainly a factor in the outcome. Hopefully it will accept and consider Young v. Hawaii, a case that literally begs to be overruled as it ruled that the 2A does not extend a right to bear outside the home. (Actually, I would hope that the Court considers both cases together, because the issue of concealed carry must be predicated on the existence of a right to bear outside the home; without such right all prohibitions and restrictions are lawful.)

  17. Heller should have never been a thing. I dont see The Right to Keep and Bear Arms and a What a court says as a win.
    More game playing and word twist. Shall not be Infringed.

  18. “Really, these weapons weren’t commonplace 20 to 30 years ago — and when California’s law was first enacted. But military-style rifles have become quite common.”

    Not correct. You would be hard pressed to come up with a “sporting arm” that did not owe it’s design to military arms or have significant design elements that came out of military arms.

    It is true enough I suppose that the M16 took a while to gain the enthusiasm of the gun buying public. That doesn’t alter the fact that most of the wood and steel guns of the time were descended from military arms development.

    What finally got the gun buying public to sit up and take notice of the M16 in its semi-auto sporting version was the fear mongering efforts to ban the thing. Suddenly, people were curious, they looked past their love of wood and blued steel and took notice of the Armalite designs unique ability to be customized to most any use.

    That’s where all the AR’s fan base came from, the gun banner’s efforts bouncing back at them.

    Morons!

  19. “Really, these weapons weren’t commonplace 20 to 30 years ago — and when California’s law was first enacted. But military-style rifles have become quite common.”

    Professor Winkler seems to forget or dismiss Competitive Shooting, where Garand Rifles were frequently seen. Though a bit heavy to drag around in the woods or up and down hills, the Garand was certainly suitable for hunting. In cases where there was a 5 round limit on magazine capacity, modified en block “clips”, that held 5 rounds were available. I personally used a Garand in competitive shooting at ranges from 200 to 1000 yards, along with many others. Hunting never interested me.

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