On Friday, Gun Violence Awareness Day, an activist federal judge in California revoked the state’s ban on sales of assault rifles, comparing the AR-15 to a Swiss Army knife and saying the ban was an illegal suppression of residents’ Second Amendment rights, CNN reports.

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego said in his ruling that the state law deprives Californians of owning guns commonly found in other states, saying, “Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment. Firearms deemed as ‘assault weapons’ are fairly ordinary, popular, modern rifles.”

Benitez, a George W. Bush appointee to the federal district court, went to to incorrectly blame the media for the image of assault rifles, saying “One is to be forgiven if one is persuaded by news media and others that the nation is awash with murderous AR-15 assault rifles. The facts, however, do not support this hyperbole, and facts matter.”

In fact, AR-15s or similar weapons have been used in the deadliest mass murders in modern US history, including the Las Vegas concert massacre, the Pulse nightclub shooting and the Parkland high school murders, to name a few.

A favorite jurist of gun rights activists, Benitez has issued decisions that have attempted to overturn laws set by the California legislature and signed into law by the governors.  He struck down the ban on high-capacity magazines and ruled that the states restrictions on remote buying of ammunition via catalogs or the internet was unconstitutional.  Both rulings are currently under appeal and likely to be overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Benitez put an immediate stay on his ruling to allow California to appeal the decision.

“Today’s decision is a direct threat to public safety and the lives of innocent Californians, period. As the son of a judge, I grew up with deep respect for the judicial process and the importance of a judge’s ability to make impartial fact-based rulings, but the fact that this judge compared the AR-15 – a weapon of war that’s used on the battlefield – to a Swiss Army Knife completely undermines the credibility of this decision and is a slap in the face to the families who’ve lost loved ones to this weapon. We’re not backing down from this fight, and we’ll continue pushing for common sense gun laws that will save lives,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.