In June 2008, the court, in a 5-4 decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller, took a very different approach and said that the 2nd Amendment protected a right of people to have guns in their homes for the sake of security. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion for the court and declared unconstitutional a 1976 ordinance in Washington that prohibited private ownership or possession of handguns. But the court was clear that this right is not absolute and the government can regulate who has guns, where they have them and what type of weapons are allowed. In fact, Justice Scalia's opinion stated that the right to possess arms was limited to weapons that "were in common use at the time" the 2nd Amendment was ratified. He said this "limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of 'dangerous and unusual weapons.'" No one can argue that AR-15 style weapons existed, let alone were in common use, in 1791. Nor can it be denied that they are very dangerous weapons. This type of semi-automatic weapon has been used in many of the worst mass shootings in the United States, including the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the 2015 San Bernardino attack, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting, the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and the shooting at a Colorado grocery store in March that killed 10 people. Judge Benitez argued that the 2nd Amendment protects a "muscular" constitutional right and the California ban is "about average guns used in average ways for average purposes." He added, "In California, murder by knife occurs seven times more often than murder by rifle." This attempt to minimize the danger of assault weapons fails to recognize that they are banned by California and other states (and for a time by the federal government) because of their ability to kill a large number of people in a short amount of time. Judge Benitez described California's law as a "failed experiment" because there have been mass killings with assault weapons since its enactment in 1989. But by that analysis, every criminal law would be a failed experiment because they are repeatedly violated. This argument makes no sense because there is no way to know how many more mass shootings would have occurred without California's ban. Clearly, the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit should reverse this ruling and allow the assault weapons ban to stand.