Professor John Donohue comments on the the spread of laws regulating certain high capacity firearms in cities for KQED.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco has rejected a bid to halt enforcement of a 2013 Sunnyvale measure that bans possession of large-capacity magazines, a decision (embedded below) that brought an immediate promise from a gun rights attorney for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court judge’s ruling last March that denied a preliminary injunction against the law, passed by Sunnyvale residents in November 2013 in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, grade-school massacre.

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Stanford law professor John Donohue said the 9th Circuit’s ruling won’t necessarily be a green light for cities considering similar legislation and they may wait until the case is finally decided. Part of the uncertainty is whether the Supreme Court will hear the case.

“Many jurisdictions don’t want to have to bear the burden of fighting the gun manufacturers,” Donahue said. “They may wait to see what happens before they move ahead.”

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“I was just asked to provide an empirical evaluation of the likely impact of regulations of this kind, and would they be beneficial in terms of reducing crime? Or might they have some adverse consequences?” Donohue said. “And in this case, I think it’s pretty clear that efforts to reduce the number of these high-capacity magazines is probably a good idea if you’re concerned about overall safety of the population.”