{"id":103669,"date":"2024-08-15T10:34:30","date_gmt":"2024-08-15T15:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=103669"},"modified":"2024-08-15T10:34:30","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T15:34:30","slug":"103669","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=103669","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

2 Contradictory Decisions on AR15 Rifle Bans Reflect Clashing Views of Supreme Court Precedents<\/a><\/p>\n

Last month, a federal judge ruled that New Jersey\u2019s ban on AR-15 rifles is\u00a0unconstitutional<\/a>. A week later, a federal appeals court deemed a similar ban in Maryland\u00a0perfectly consistent with the Second Amendment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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These dueling decisions reflect a basic disagreement about whether the Second Amendment allows the government to ban guns that are commonly used for lawful purposes, as opposed to \u201cdangerous and unusual weapons.\u201d The answer seems clear based on the Supreme Court\u2019s precedents.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The court\u2019s landmark 2008 decision in\u00a0District of Columbia v. Heller,<\/em>\u00a0which overturned a local handgun ban, noted \u201cthe historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of \u2018dangerous and unusual weapons,’\u201d which it said did not encompass firearms\u00a0\u201cin common use\u201d<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0for \u201clawful purposes like self-defense.\u201d Since handguns are \u201cthe quintessential self-defense weapon,\u201d it said, the fact that they are also commonly used by criminals could not justify prohibiting law-abiding Americans from owning them.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen reiterated that point. \u201cWhatever the likelihood that handguns were considered \u2018dangerous and unusual\u2019 during the colonial period, they are indisputably in \u2018common use\u2019 for self-defense today,\u201d it said. Colonial laws that \u201cprohibited the carrying of handguns,\u201d the court concluded, \u201cprovide no justification for laws restricting the public carry of weapons that are unquestionably in common use today.\u201d<\/p>\n

AR-15s likewise are \u201cunquestionably in common use today.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since 1990, more than 28 million \u201cmodern sporting rifles\u201d have been sold in the United States, and as many as 24 million Americans have owned AR-15s or similar rifles for lawful purposes such as self-defense, hunting and recreational target shooting.<\/p>\n

Like the law at issue in Heller, U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan noted last month, New Jersey\u2019s AR-15 ban amounts to \u201cthe total prohibition (of) a commonly used firearm for self-defense \u2026 within the home.\u201d And under Heller, \u201ca categorical ban on a class of weapons commonly used for self-defense is unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sheridan highlighted testimony showing that \u201cAR-15s are well-adapted for self-defense.\u201d When it upheld Maryland\u2019s AR-15 ban last week,\u00a0by contrast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit<\/a>\u00a0declared that such rifles are \u201cill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That conclusion, Judge Julius Richardson noted in a dissent joined by four of his colleagues, ignored the self-defense advantages of AR-15s, including better accuracy, greater recoil absorption, and more stopping power than handguns. While handguns also have certain advantages, Richardson said, the appeals court had no business second-guessing gun owners\u2019 weighing of these rifles\u2019 pros and cons, thereby \u201creplac[ing] Americans\u2019 opinions of their utility with its own.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Where Richardson sees self-defense advantages, the majority sees features that make AR-15s especially deadly in mass shootings.<\/strong><\/p>\n

These clashing perspectives illustrate the folly of trying to draw a legal distinction between guns that are suitable for legitimate purposes and guns that supposedly are good for nothing but killing innocent people.\u00a0[spoiler alert: there are only guns; no guns are \u201cmore legitimate or \u201cmore lethal\u201d]<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The 4th Circuit\u2019s opinion is long on detailed descriptions of such horrifying crimes but short on the sort of analysis required by Bruen, which said gun control laws must be \u201cconsistent with this Nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation.\u201d And the appeals court\u2019s discussion of mass shootings features several familiar distortions.<\/p>\n

The 4th Circuit calls AR-15s the \u201cweapons of choice\u201d for mass shootings, even while noting that most mass shooters choose other kinds of guns. It emphasizes their military lineage, which Richardson notes is common for civilian firearms, and their destructive power, which is shared by many rifles that Maryland did not ban.<\/p>\n

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The appeals court never acknowledges that mass shootings account for a tiny percentage of gun homicides or that handguns play a much bigger role in murders than any sort of rifle. It, therefore, never squarely confronts the point that the Supreme Court made in Heller: that criminal use of guns does not negate the right of law-abiding Americans to own them. <\/em><\/strong>It looks like the justices will have to remind the lower courts of that principle.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2 Contradictory Decisions on AR15 Rifle Bans Reflect Clashing Views of Supreme Court Precedents Last month, a federal judge ruled that New Jersey\u2019s ban on AR-15 rifles is\u00a0unconstitutional. A week later, a federal appeals court deemed a similar ban in Maryland\u00a0perfectly consistent with the Second Amendment. These dueling decisions reflect a basic disagreement about whether … Continue reading “”<\/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-103669","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\/103669","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=103669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103670,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103669\/revisions\/103670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}