{"id":100664,"date":"2024-03-12T17:22:23","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T22:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=100664"},"modified":"2024-03-12T17:23:16","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T22:23:16","slug":"100664","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=100664","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ammoland.com\/2024\/03\/assault-weapons-ban-government-must-prove-that-weapons-not-in-common-use\/#ixzz8UImzbG8B\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spoiler Alert: \u2018Assault Weapons\u2019 Ban ~ Government Must Prove That Weapons Are NOT In Common Use<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in\u00a0<i>Bianchi v. Brown\u00a0<\/i>issued an important order that is likely to backfire on the anti-gunners.<\/p>\n<p>The court directed the parties to submit supplemental briefing addressing the following two questions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>(1) does the determination of whether a weapon is \u201cin common use\u201d occur at the first or second step of\u00a0<i>Bruen\u2019<\/i>s text-and-history methodology, and<\/li>\n<li>(2) who bears the burden of establishing that a weapon is in common use.\u00a0<i>Heller<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>Bruen<\/i>\u00a0provide explicit answers to the questions posed by the Fourth Circuit, and those answers favor the protection of our Second Amendment rights.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><i>Bianchi<\/i>\u00a0challenges the constitutionality of Maryland\u2019s \u201cassault weapons\u201d ban, which seeks to outlaw the AR-15, among other semiautomatic firearms.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Tellingly, the original Fourth Circuit panel in\u00a0<i>Bianchi<\/i>\u00a0seemed poised to issue a pro-Second Amendment ruling, but before that occurred, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ammoland.com\/2024\/01\/fourth-circuit-to-hear-maryland-second-amendment-case-en-banc\/\" rel=\"\" data-uri=\"179b1600ff3b5f1e9729bb96e423acf3\">Fourth Circuit took the case en banc<\/a>\u00a0likely to avoid the possibility of such an outcome.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\"><strong>Bruen\u00a0instructs that the constitutional inquiry starts with the text of the Second Amendment. This means that, at the outset, a lower court must determine whether the object of a firearm\u2019s regulation is an \u201carm.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"code-block code-block-6\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1681151438500-0\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>At this first step,\u00a0<i>Bruen<\/i>\u00a0instructs that the burden is on the party challenging the firearms regulation to show that the item being banned is an \u201carm.\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supct\/html\/07-290.ZO.html\" data-uri=\"b376c6b005930b4f505e7afe77b5b8e3\"><i>Heller<\/i><\/a>\u00a0defined \u201carms\u201d as \u201cweapons of offense or armor of defense.\u201d There is no doubt that AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles subject to the Maryland ban are \u201carms,\u201d which means that the burden shifts to the government to show that the arms it seeks to ban are\u00a0<i>not<\/i>\u00a0\u201cin common use\u201d by Americans for lawful purposes (or are dangerous and unusual).<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><i>Bianchi\u00a0<\/i>is an \u201carms ban\u201d case in the same way that\u00a0<i>Heller<\/i>\u00a0was an \u201carms ban\u201d case, which struck down D.C.\u2019s ban on owning a handgun, was an arms ban case.\u00a0<i>Heller<\/i>\u00a0provides the constitutional test to be applied by the lower courts in arms ban cases, and that is the \u201cin common use\u201d test.<\/p>\n<p><strong>There is a reason that the Fourth Circuit in\u00a0<i>Bianchi<\/i>\u00a0asked the parties to address when the \u201cin common use\u201d test comes into play.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If the \u201cin common use\u201d analysis occurs at the plain text level (text-first), the burden would be on the pro-Second Amendment plaintiffs to demonstrate that an arm is in common use. If, however, the inquiry occurs at the historical level (history-second), the burden rests on the government to prove that an arm is dangerous and unusual.<\/p>\n<div class=\"code-block code-block-7\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1681151478485-0\">The anti-gun movement desperately wants the \u201cin common use\u201d analysis to occur at the plain text level where the party challenging the firearm regulation has the burden, but that is entirely contrary to the Supreme Court\u2019s holding in <i>Heller<\/i>. How do we know? It\u2019s plainly obvious from the decision itself.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The Supreme Court\u2019s articulation of the \u201cin common use\u201d test was the result of the\u00a0<i>historical<\/i>\u00a0analysis undertaken by the\u00a0<i>Heller<\/i>\u00a0Court. That historical analysis confirmed, first, that only those arms that were considered\u00a0<i>both\u00a0<\/i>dangerous and unusual at the Founding could be regulated and, second, that the types of arms brought by citizens to militia duty were those commonly-used for lawful purposes. Because the \u201cin common use\u201d test arose from the historical inquiries conducted by the Supreme Court in\u00a0<i>Heller<\/i>, the \u201cin common use\u201d analysis must occur at the historical level of the\u00a0<i>Bruen<\/i>\u00a0methodology where the burden rests on the government.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The two questions posed by the Fourth Circuit in\u00a0<i>Bianchi<\/i>\u00a0have already been answered by the Supreme Court.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><i>Heller\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0<i>Bruen\u00a0<\/i>make clear that the burden is on the government to show that an arm is not in common use, and that this inquiry takes place at the historical level of\u00a0<i>Bruen\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0methodology. While the Fourth Circuit can continue to fabricate reasons for ruling against the Second Amendment and our fundamental freedoms, we hope that its errors will finally force the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and remind the rogue lower courts that its decisions in\u00a0\u00a0<i>Heller<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>Bruen<\/i>\u00a0are the law of the land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spoiler Alert: \u2018Assault Weapons\u2019 Ban ~ Government Must Prove That Weapons Are NOT In Common Use The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in\u00a0Bianchi v. Brown\u00a0issued an important order that is likely to backfire on the anti-gunners. The court directed the parties to submit supplemental briefing addressing the following two questions: (1) &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=100664\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100664"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100666,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100664\/revisions\/100666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}