Possible grounds to strike down 1224
OK, The law is signed and cannot be modified at this point, so now I can pose the question to members more legally-astute than me. I am not a lawyer, but like you, I can google, read, and think critically for myself. Maybe someone with a legal background can say whether this would hold up...
Several posts have recognized the possibility of recategorizing your 556x45 magazines as 458 SOCOM magazines. For those who don't know the 458 SOCOM was specifically designed to use the same magazines as 556x45 -- it just rides in a single stack instead of a double stack so you get fewer rounds in the magazine. For example, a standard 30 round 556x45 mag holds 10-11 458 SOCOM rounds.
One could restamp a 556x45 magazine with 458 SOCOM markings, and argue that it is a 10-rounder. Now imagine a LEO who says... " Not so fast, it doesn't matter what it says on the outside, I can load more than fifteen 556x45 rounds in it and fire it out of my m4 and it works just fine!" To which you reply "Here's one filled with 10 rounds. See, no more fit. Now watch me shoot them out of my rifle". Who's right??!
This capacity schizophrenia can be used to strike it down. If not the whole statute, at least for ar-15 magazines, which was the main intent of the bill.
Constitutional Amendments 5 and 14 provide protections for due process, which includes protection from prosecution under vague laws where the citizen cannot reasonably understand what is legal and what is not.
From Supreme court Justice Sutherland 87 years ago.... (search wikipedia, void for vagueness)
"[T]he terms of a penal statute [...] must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties… and a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law."
The upshot of this is that if a common person (not a lawyer) cannot determine what actions are legal and what actions are not, then the law is void. This kills the 15-round limit for standard ar-15 magazines because they are "dual use". Used one way they are legal, and used the other way they are not. Nothing in the law tells you which application to use to determine if the magazine is legal or not.
When loaded with 458 SOCOM ammunition it is a legal 10-round magazine that functions perfectly in a 458 SOCOM rifle. The same magazine, when loaded with 5.56x45 ammunition is now an illegal 30-round magazine that functions perfectly in a m4 carbine.
If I were to transfer such a magazine to a LEO on 02 JULY. The LEO could arbitrarily determine that I had illegally transferred a 30 round magazine, or a 10 round magazine depending on which ammo type he wanted to believe it could hold. A law that can be arbitrarily applied like this is void on its face.
An unloaded ar15 magazine is not exclusively a 30 round magazine or exclusively a 10 round magazine. It is both! This uncertainty in the actual capacity absolutely fulfills the test that "a man of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application".
1) At worst, It seems that you can transfer an unloaded 556 PMAG to your hearts content (Is that true?). You can probable even transfer a loaded one. After all, transferring the magazine or the ammo separately is legal.
2) At best, this situation demonstrates the law is too vague, and is doomed.
http://www.ar-15.co/images/smilies/oops.gif
Thank you Justice Sutherland.
