Massachusetts has never been friendly to guns, but now things have gotten nasty. For example, there’s been an assault weapon ban for more than a quarter of a century and the latest measure does a lot of damage to the right to keep and bear arms in the state, and the governor’s unilateral decision to put the law into effect right away–something she’s only really authorized to do in the event of an emergency–just makes the whole thing stink even worse.
But at least there are the courts. The law was always going to be challenged, and that’s where pandering to anti-gun interests ends.
More or less, at least.
Currently, the 26-year-old assault weapon ban is up for challenge. This is the first challenge of it since the Bruen decision.
Yet it seems that the appeals court has already made up its mind.
A federal appeals court on Monday appeared likely to uphold Massachusetts’ ban on AR-15s and other semiautomatic weapons and reject arguments that the law is unconstitutionally invalid following recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that expanded gun rights.
A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals appeared skeptical of arguments by a lawyer for the advocacy group the National Association for Gun Rights that the law infringed citizens’ rights to keep and bear arms for self-defense under the U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment.
But U.S. Circuit Judge Julie Rikelman, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, pressed the lawyer, Barry Arrington, on what evidence he had that AR-15s are actually used, rather than owned, for self defense.
She cited arguments by the state that such weapons pose “a unique risk that didn’t exist at the founding which is the ability of someone with this kind of firearm to kill or hurt a large number of people ten or more in a matter of minutes.”
Except that’s not the standard. I get where she’s pulling it from, mind you, namely the whole “in common use” thing, but that was never what it meant and she knows it. Besides, despite that phrase being so commonly used, it’s still not the standard that applies.
The Bruen decision was pretty darn clear. If there isn’t a parallel with a law from the time of the nation’s founding, then the law is unconstitutional. It doesn’t matter whether the guns are used in self-defense particularly often or not. That wasn’t laid out in any Supreme Court decision as the standard to be used.
As a result, Rikelman is setting herself up for disappointment.
Especially as she’s claiming these guns form a “unique risk.” That’s irrelevant in a court of law, even if it were true. It’s not true, however, which only makes it worse.
I expect this case to move up the judicial food chain and I sincerely hope the Supreme Court gets off it’s rump and finally overturns these laws as the unconstitutional nonsense that they actually are. Then, maybe, we can move on from this crap and focus on something a smidge more meaningful, like the nature of toe jam or something.
