Gavin Newsom delivered an extraordinarily fierce rebuke Thursday of the federal judge who struck down California’s assault weapons ban, calling the judge a “wholly-owned subsidiary of the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association.".

Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta condemned those comments as both inaccurate and offensive to gun violence victims and vowed an appeal.

Speaking on the rooftop of the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, Newsom called Benitez a "stone-cold ideologue" whose decisions are “press releases on behalf of the gun lobby.”.

“We need to call this federal judge out,” Newsom said.

Now that Judge Benitez ruled against Gavin Newsom, he is shamefully attacking a federal judge with politicized falsehoods because Newsom got a result he didn’t like," Michel said in an emailed statement.

The San Diego-based judge issued rulings in 2019 and 2020 that found the state's ammunition-related restrictions unconstitutional; both were contained in a 2016 ballot initiative that Newsom championed.

Newsom and gun control advocates lambasted gun rights activists for seeking to put consequential cases before Benitez in a tactic that Newsom assailed as “judge-shopping.”.

Two weeks ago after a mass shooting at a San Jose light-rail yard, Newsom said, "What the hell is going on in the United States of America?" But the governor's direct condemnation Thursday of a sitting judge was a remarkable instance of animosity between two branches of government.

Benitez issued an automatic 30-day stay of his ruling, acknowledging that the state would pursue the appeal that Newsom and Bonta vowed to file