When people describe guns, many people use a variety of terms. They may refer to names of the different types of guns (rifle, carbine, shotgun, revolver, pistol, etc.). They may refer to the manufacturer of a specific gun or the model for that firearm. They may use nonsense terms like “assault rifle” or use descriptors like “scary” that say more about the people saying the word than about the gun itself.

One phrase that you don’t tend to hear, though, is “abnormally dangerous guns.”

What does that even mean? A gun that is more dangerous than a “normally dangerous gun?” What makes the danger from one gun versus another gun abnormal?

Those all would seem to be logical questions to ask when you’re talking about a law that was passed in reference to firearms, but (no surprise here) the California legislature (or, at least, the majority who voted to pass the law) didn’t seem to be bothered that their law was incredibly broad, vague, and ripe for abuse.

Or maybe that was the point.

But one judge was having none of that, which, considering who appointed him, is a surprise. Efthymis Oraiopoulos writes,

A federal judge found California’s “abnormally dangerous guns” law unconstitutional in one part after a lawsuit from a gun industry association.

San Diego District Judge Andrew Schopler, a President Joe Biden appointee, blocked California’s attorney general from enforcing a new law that allows residents and the state and local governments to sue members of the firearms industry that manufacture or sell “abnormally dangerous” guns.

It is the first ruling in a case challenging the constitutionality of California’s Firearm Industry Responsibility Act.

Oraiopoulos continues:

Mr. Schopler did not address the Second Amendment issue in the Feb. 21 ruling. Instead, he found the law likely violated the Constitution’s so-called dormant Commerce Clause, which restricts states from interfering with interstate commerce.

For example, he said, a Tennessee company that manufactures guns that are legal in its state but that meet California’s definition of “abnormally dangerous” could still face liability under the law even if its products were shipped to nearby Arizona and used later to commit a crime in California.

“Because the ‘abnormally dangerous’ firearm rule reaches beyond California’s borders and directly regulates out-of-state commercial transactions, it likely runs afoul of the dormant Commerce Clause,” Mr. Schopler wrote.

He issued a preliminary injunction barring California Attorney General Rob Bonta from suing NSSF’s members while the lawsuit moves forward.

I’ll admit that I never expected a Biden-appointed judge to make such a sensible decision on this case (since so many of them make terrible and idiotic decisions from the bench), and I would have liked the decision to have also recognized how the gun control law violates the Constitution based on the Second Amendment.

But I’ll take victories like this and am glad that Schopler did the right thing and for a right reason.

Now, if the rest of the judges in the court system showed intelligence and character in upholding their oath of office, we’d have a much better situation in our country already.