A federal appeals court this week put on hold a judge’s ruling overturning California’s 32-year-old ban on assault weapons. On Monday, a three-judge panel in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay (pdf) of U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez’s June 4 order. It followed appeals from state officials on the decision, saying that the law is needed to prevent gun deaths. Benitez, a George W. Bush appointee, had ruled earlier this month that the state’s decades-old ban on so-called “assault weapons” violates the Second Amendment. The state government, through the law, “bans an entire class of very popular hardware—firearms that are lawful under federal law and under the laws of most states and that are commonly held by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,” Benitez wrote in his 94-page ruling in Miller et al. v. Bonta et al. “Under no level of heightened scrutiny can the law survive.” California …