The State acknowledges that Mr. [Ryan] Busse offers no historical testimony, but argues that he addresses several issues still relevant under Bruen. The State says Mr. Busse’s testimony is relevant to whether the firearms at issue are covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment. State’s Opp. at 9. But as established above, that is an open-and-shut question. And while Mr. Busse includes some discussion of the features of so-called “assault weapons” he does not opine on whether those features represent a “dramatic technological change” that would allow the State to engage in the “more nuanced approach.”
The State also exposes its shocking ignorance about the very firearms it regulates when it attempts to equate only caliber with power, while suggesting both of those are apparently unrelated to velocity. Every child in this country at some point learns Newton’s second law, which is that force equals mass times acceleration. The caliber of a bullet pertains to its mass (though is not totally determinative of it, as .223 and .22LR have similar calibers but very different projectile weights), and the speed at which a particular mass moves determines how forcefully it impacts the intended target.
It is not Plaintiffs’ “view” that .223 Remington is one of the weaker centerfire cartridges. It is an indisputable fact that it is. That is why, as Plaintiffs showed in their motion, a handful of states actually banned .223 for deer hunting out of fear it was not powerful enough to reliably kill a deer, unlike far more powerful common centerfire rifle rounds like .308. (Virginia argued that their caliber regulation is necessary because the use of rifles of a caliber less than .23 to dispatch deer would result in an unacceptable number of crippled wounded and/or lost deer.).
Mr. Busse knows all of this. On his Twitter account on July 5, 2022, he explained that “the typical hunting gun fires a much larger bullet (might be 200 grains or more) some at similarly [to .223] fast speeds. Those rifles are technically MUCH more powerful than an AR15.” Just this week, on April 12, 2023, Mr. Busse similarly tweeted that “The AR15 does not fire particularly high-power rifle rounds when compared to single rounds of most hunting rifles. Single .223/5.56 cartridges of the AR15 are only fractionally ‘as powerful’ as a cartridge like the .30-06.” Perhaps Plaintiffs should have retained Mr. Busse to rebut Mr. Busse.
— Plaintiffs’ reply to defendants’ opposition to motions to exclude expert testimony in Rupp v. Bonta, challenging California’s “assault weapons” ban