Five days after it overturned Hawaii’s law, the Court agreed to hear a pair of cases involving bans on widely owned rifles that politicians tendentiously describe as “assault weapons.” A dozen states, beginning with California in 1989, have enacted such laws, which hinge on arbitrarily prohibited features such as folding stocks, pistol grips, and barrel shrouds.
The rifles targeted by these laws are rarely used by criminals but commonly used by law-abiding Americans, who own more than 30 million of them. The latter point is constitutionally relevant because the Supreme Court has said the Second Amendment applies to “bearable arms” that are “in common use” for “lawful purposes like self-defense.”
The long-simmering question posed by these cases is whether the Second Amendment guarantees “the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.” If so, other restrictions on the arms Americans are allowed to buy, such as magazine limits and California’s handgun specifications, may be vulnerable to constitutional challenges.
The decided cases also have potentially broad implications. If drug use, by itself, does not justify disarming someone, what about a nonviolent felony conviction? And if Hawaii’s broad restriction on public gun possession was unconstitutional, the far-reaching, location-specific bans imposed by states such as California and New York likewise seem legally dubious.
Nearly two decades after recognizing a constitutional right to arms, the Supreme Court is beginning to address lingering questions about its contours. Control-happy politicians probably will not like the answers.
— Jacob Sullum in Supreme Court Begins Answering Lingering Questions About Constitutional Constraints on Gun Control
Quoting a person I knew who once said …”The gun control tyrants still exist and do their crap only because we haven’t dragged them out back and hanged them yet.”
Booger both you and your “person I knew” are both cowards to talk big but do little or nothing.
I doubt the Supreme court is going to invalidate the NFA, though they really should. They’re probably rest on “in common use” to grandfather in machine gun bans, at least for a generation to come.
The thing that worries me is that the left have completely taken over most of the law schools, had finished up at least a decade ago, so the bench for conservative judicial appointments is getting really thin.
The NFA was a knee-jerk reaction to a small number of armed robbers. Maybe with a bit of Red Menace hysteria mixed in, which was why Europe adopted gun control.
NFA was not terribly strict unlike some state machine gun laws. Hughes Amendment is ripe for overturn
Of course, gun rights patriots and Trumpies could join together to publicly call for the repeal of the so-called Hughes Amendment but TACO. Like Leftists, they much prefer to finagle their cause through the courts instead of winning elections. Election victories take work to make happen. Trumpies detest work.
SCOTUS has really leaned into the whole “traditional” kind of thing… and in the beginning, the militia brought their own weapons. As such, “assault weapons” and actual assault rifles (which has a legal definition) are **exactly** what “the militia” needs access to have.
And “the militia” was “all able-bodied males 18-45” or something like that. So, you know, everyone who isn’t a felon.
I’m not holding by breath for that ruling, of course, but it would be consistent with, what, Bruen? The one that set up the whole “traditional” thing.
“everyone who isn’t a felon”?
Being female makes one a felon? Who knew?!
“Our ancestors weren’t stoopid.”– P. J. O’Rourke
If they just rule on ARs/semi-automatic rifles it will still leave a huge battle to fight over all the other firearms that are defined as ‘assault weapons’ under the bans. It’s a legal term, not a technical one, most states pattern their bans after California’s which includes various pistols, shotguns and rifles by feature and/or model. We should all be hoping SCOTUS addresses EVERYTHING in the Connecticut ‘assault weapon’ ban.
“…they just rule on ARs/semi-automatic rifles it will still leave a huge battle to fight over all the other firearms that are defined as ‘assault weapons’ under the bans. It’s a legal term, not a technical one, most…”
Actually ‘assault
weapons’ is not a legal term. Its a ‘general category’ label that has never been defined as a legal term under U.S. law because the application meaning can vary.
Look at any state law on ‘assault weapons’ and you will find its only what they include as a description and not a specific ‘weapon’. Thats because the term ‘assault weapon’ is not a specific legal term.
As to semi-automatic weapons, the notion that these are inherently “weapons of war” is misguided. American semi-automatic rifles were produced for the civilian market some 30 years before the semi-automatic M1 Garand rifle was approved for the U.S. Army: Winchester had its Model 1903 and 1905, while Remington introduced its “Auto-Loading Repeating Rifle” in 1906. Vintage advertisements illustrate their civilian use as hunting rifles.
Further, citizens may have need of semi-automatic weapons for more than sport and self-defense. Under the federal Militia Act (10 USC 246), all able-bodied men aged 17 to 45 who are not members of the National Guard or Naval Militia are members of the Unorganized Militia.
All of the above is readily verifiable, as well as interesting, so check it out.