The District of Columbia just got hammered in Benson v. United States, No. 23-CF-0514, and the fallout is exactly as significant as I said it would be back in September. The DC Court of Appeals — the highest court in the District, the functional equivalent of a state supreme court — ruled on March 5, 2026, that DC’s large-capacity magazine ban, codified at D.C. Code § 7-2506.01, violates the Second Amendment. Tyree Benson’s conviction for the mala prohibitum offense of simply possessing a magazine holding more than 10 rounds has been vacated. And now DC is running scared, filing an emergency motion to suspend the opinion’s precedential effect. That motion is going nowhere.
The DOJ Policy Change That Made This Win Possible
I want to be clear about something: this victory did not happen in a vacuum. In September 2025, the Trump DOJ — under Attorney General Pam Bondi, Civil Rights AAG Harmeet Dhillon, and U.S. Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro — filed a major amicus brief in Benson arguing that magazines are protected arms under the Second Amendment and cannot be banned. That brief changed the trajectory of this case. The Bondi-Trump administration picked a side, and it was our side.
Why are magazines “arms” in the constitutional sense? Because Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), defined an “arm” as any instrument that facilitates armed self-defense. A magazine plainly qualifies. And under Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), only arms that are both dangerous and unusual may be banned. Magazines holding more than 10 rounds are in common use by tens of millions of Americans for lawful purposes. They cannot be “unusual.” They cannot be banned.
Beyond the brief, Pirro’s office has not been enforcing DC’s magazine ban since at least September 2025 — the DOJ backing its legal position with real enforcement muscle.
DC’s Emergency Motion: Chaos Claims With No Evidence
After losing at the panel level, DC raced to the DC Court of Appeals with an emergency motion to suspend the opinion’s precedential effect while it prepares a petition for rehearing en banc. The argument, stripped to its core: if this opinion stands, there will be chaos on the streets of DC.
Benson’s attorney filed an opposition brief that absolutely dismantles this claim. Here is what the brief says, and it is worth quoting at length:
“In asking this court to suspend the precedential effect of its opinion, the District of Columbia claims that the opinion is creating real chaos on the ground because a criminal with an unregistered firearm might be able to insulate himself from liability simply by attaching an 11-plus round magazine to it. Not only does the district cite no evidence of any real chaos on the ground, but the potential chaos hypothesized by the district can easily and entirely be avoided by the district’s immediate good-faith compliance with the court’s decision in this case rather than a fanciful request to suspend the legal effect of the opinion.”
That is a direct shot. The brief is telling DC: you have no evidence, you have no legal authority, and the “chaos” you’re describing is entirely self-inflicted. If DC doesn’t want chaos, the solution is to stop enforcing an unconstitutional law — which the DOJ has already done.
DC Cites No Law, No Rule, No Precedent
The opposition brief lands its hardest punch on procedural grounds. DC’s emergency motion is, in the brief’s words, a “novel request” that “finds no support in any statute, rule, or judicial decision, and the District of Columbia cites none.” Here is the key passage:
“All of District of Columbia’s stated reasons for suspending the opinion’s precedential effect, while this court considers a forthcoming petition for rehearing en banc, boil down to arguments that the case was wrongly decided and merits an en banc review. But under this court’s established rules of appellate procedure, even a wrongly-decided opinion retains precedential force unless and until it is vacated following the grant of a petition for rehearing en banc. The District of Columbia offers no special reason for this court to depart from its ordinary order of operations.”
This is important. DC is not arguing there is a genuine emergency. DC is arguing it doesn’t like the result — and that is not grounds for unprecedented relief. My read is that the court is not going to buy it.
The Bigger Picture: A Split of Authority Heading to SCOTUS
Here is where this gets even more significant. The Benson ruling creates a split of authority on whether large-capacity magazines are constitutionally protected arms. That split is now being pressed directly to the United States Supreme Court in two pending cert petitions: Gator’s Custom Guns, Inc. v. Washington, No. 25-153, and Duncan v. Bonta, No. 25-198. Both cases have cited the Benson decision to the Court as evidence the split is real and ripe for resolution.
I said in September that this DOJ brief was major breaking news. A lot of people pushed back. Now, six months later, we have a landmark DC Court of Appeals ruling, a fracture in the circuit courts, and two cert petitions sitting at SCOTUS asking the justices to settle the question once and for all. That is what I saw coming down the chessboard. The Supreme Court has every reason to take one of these cases — perhaps as early as next term.
The anti-gunners in DC can file all the emergency motions they want. The precedential effect of Benson is intact, the DOJ is on the right side, and the road to SCOTUS is open.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.