Something fairly interesting happened yesterday while Jeremy and I were at the range creating ever more content for you, our dear readers. A United States District Court Judge in Mississippi ruled that the ban on machinegun possession is unconstitutional.
I’m sorry…what?
Yes, you read that correctly. The United States had charged Justin Brown with possession of an unregistered machinegun. Mr. Brown objected to the charge based on the fact that he’s a lawful firearm owner and claimed that the ban on machinegun ownership is unconstitutional.
In his ruling, Judge Carlton Reeves, an Obama appointee, made no bones at all about the fact that he hated what he was doing, but under Bruen — of which he is also not a fan — the law is very clear.
The Supreme Court has, of course, ruled that gun control laws like the machinegun ban can be justified in the case of firearms that are “dangerous and unusual.” Judge Reeves, however, ruled that while machineguns are dangerous, they are not, in fact, unusual. And we can thank the less than rigorous work product of the great legal minds of the US Department of Justice for their failure to argue that machineguns are rare. As the judge noted . . .
Bruen nevertheless tells us that there is an American “historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’” 597 U.S. at 21 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 626). That is the law to be followed. The ultimate problem for the government, then, is this: although machineguns are “dangerous,” it does not explain how machineguns are unusual. …
The Morgan case raised by Mr. Brown says there were more than 740,000 machineguns lawfully possessed in the United States in 2021. 2024 WL 3936767, at *4 (citing ATF data). The government has not pointed to any other number. The Court accepts it as true.
Seven hundred and forty thousand is no small number.7 The government presents no argument or explanation for why such a large figure is somehow not common. Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines common as, among other things, “widespread.”8 Three-quarters of a million of any kind of firearm is plainly widespread.
The government also failed to show any historical evidence that banning machineguns would be consistent with gun laws at the founding.
Under the new [Bruen] standard, the government must prove that its desired firearm restriction—which here, means the statute criminalizing simple machinegun possession—is “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” …
The government found this out the hard way in Morgan. There, Judge Broomes observed that as Congress did not ban machinegun possession until 1986, the modern ban is inconsistent with history and tradition. 2024 WL 3936767, at *4. Even today, in fact, “it is perfectly legal for a person who has not been divested of his firearm rights under some other provision of law to acquire and possess a machinegun, so long as it was lawfully possessed by someone before the relevant date in 1986,” and other provisions of federal law are followed.
To be clear, what we have here is a very rare judge…one who his openly hostile not only to the accused’s right to own a machinegun and also to the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Bruen…but is able to put his personal beliefs aside and apply the law as it currently stands.
The government has failed to meet its burden of establishing that machineguns are both dangerous and unusual. Under Bruen, it therefore cannot restrict Mr. Brown’s possession of one in his home.
Let’s be clear here. This ruling came in a criminal case and applies only to the defendant, Justin Brown. Don’t head over to your local gun store expecting to buy full auto M4 any time soon.
The question now is what will happen next…whether or not the DOJ will choose to appeal the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Yes, the Fifth is probably the most gun-friendly circuit in the nation. But they’ve also ruled in the past that machineguns are both dangerous and unusual. That, however, was before Bruen. And you can bet that if the Brown decision is appealed, the DOJ will come up with arguments supporting its contention that guns with giggle-switches are, in fact, rare.
In other words, keep your powder dry. Also keep and eye on this case (by tuning in here, of course) because as Pink Floyd would have said, this is just another brick on which to build more challenges to legal limits to gun rights imposed under the NFA and other gun control laws.
So:
1. As applied (only to the defendant)
2. The defendant brought up that there were 700k MGs (which is greater than the 200k stun guns in the Caetano case)
3. The ruling by the Judge only “allows” the MG “in the home”, and not “in public” (eg, a range).
Now we need a facial challenge….
That there are only 740,000 machine guns lawfully owned is largely a result of the, shall we say constitutionally questionable, National Firearms Act, and the 1986 ban itself on new full auto weapons for civilian ownership.
Absent those two longstanding laws there would be a lot more full auto weapons out there, and entry level examples would go back to approximate those of the semi auto versions. Rare collector’s items would still carry sky high prices, and might well go higher as more people own entry level pieces, but the entry level stuff like new M-4s and Ruger AC.556s would be little more than semi-autos.
Post-ban machine guns cost little more than the semiauto variants. Only a few small parts differ. At most, a few machining operations may be needed because semiautos can not be readily convertible under current regulations. If it weren’t for the NFA and the Hughes Amendment every gun owner would have multiple select-fire guns and it would be perfectly normal. $200 in 1934 is $4,682 today which until recently made NFA items prohibitively expensive. I would love to buy full-auto same as any other gun.
Wow. A judge with integrity and appointed by Obama. Will wonders never cease?
I would’ve had my lawyer also include all post-samples, pre-samples, all mg’s owned by We The People (i.e. paid for by our tax dollars) in the hands of the military, and federal, state, and local LE.
AND, I’d even include “illegal”, “unregistered” mg’s out there, because why not? They certainly exist and they’re so common that AFT just sent out a pearl-clutching panic email to LE and FFLs about alllll the different flavors, what they look like, and how they function.
Also point out to the court how many more mg’s there would be without unconstitutional Hughes picking an arbitrary date out of a hat, thus artificially limiting the number able to be owned for almost half a damn century now…
The only reason that machineguns are rather rare at this point in history is that the government has first tried to tax them into unaffordability and then just outright banned the creation of any new ones. They are significantly less common that they should be ONLY due to the government’s past impingements, and they want to use that as an excuse to continue the policy.
They want to commit two wrongs to deny us our rights.
Rare and Unusual only in the sense that non-military/LE do not have access to MGs as they are expensive to acquire. Take into account how many the Military and LE have and they aren’t rare all…