In his most recent ruling regarding the assault weapons ban in California, Justice Reinhardt ruled that the exception for retiring police officers was unconstitutional and struck it. The problem is that precedent says that the judiciary can not do that to a criminal statute as a whole bunch of former police officers just became felons. The only way to strike a part of a criminal statute is to strike the whole and let the legislature re-enact it.

Read more about this and other problems with the 9th's decision on Stuart Buck's blog.

Also, Howard Bashman points out that I sent him a query about his actual position on all of this.