{"id":104186,"date":"2024-09-09T16:30:20","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T21:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=104186"},"modified":"2024-09-09T16:30:20","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T21:30:20","slug":"104186","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=104186","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, of course under Bruen’s<\/em> Text History and Tradition test, ALL guns ban laws are unconstitutional<\/p>\n

\n

Court Rules Federal Machinegun Law Cannot Be Justified under Bruen<\/a><\/p>\n

A district court in Kansas has ruled that the federal law prohibiting the possession of \u201cmachineguns\u201d failed the test set out in\u00a0New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass\u2019n, Inc. v. Bruen<\/em>\u00a0(2022). \u201cThe court finds that the Second Amendment applies to the weapons charged because they are \u2018bearable arms\u2019 within the original meaning of the amendment. The court further finds that the government has failed to establish that this nation\u2019s history of gun regulation justifies the application of 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 922(o) to Defendant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
The case is United States v. Morgan<\/em><\/a>, No. 23-10047-JWB (D. Kan. Aug. 21, 2024; the ruling was modified slightly on August 26). The defendant, Tamori Morgan, was charged with two counts of possessing a \u201cmachinegun\u201d (a machinegun, and a full-auto switch \u201cmachinegun conversion device\u201d) in violation of federal law.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

That law, 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 922(o), makes it a crime, with some exceptions, to possess a \u201cmachinegun,\u201d defined to include \u201cany weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.\u201d Unlike other definitions in 26 U.S.C. \u00a7 5845, this lacks any reference to weapons that use the energy of an explosive to fire a projectile.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Morgan moved to dismiss the charges based on\u00a0Bruen<\/em>, claiming the federal prohibition was unconstitutional, both facially and as applied to him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beginning his analysis, Judge John Broomes observed that the \u201cmachinegun\u201d definition was \u201cextremely broad,\u201d potentially encompassing \u201ceverything from an aircraft-mounted automatic cannon to a small hand-held taser or stun gun that can easily be placed inside a handbag and which shoots multi-shot bursts of electrical particles with a single pull of the trigger, or a fully automatic BB gun that shoots multiple rounds of metal projectiles using compressed air.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it was the wide scope of this definition that doomed Morgan\u2019s facial challenge, as that required him to show that the challenged law was unconstitutional in all of its applications. While the machinegun and switch Morgan was charged with possessing were \u201cbearable arms\u201d within the plain text of the Second Amendment, things like aircraft-mounted guns were not.<\/p>\n

On the remaining as-applied challenge, the government argued \u2013 citing language in\u00a0District of Columbia v.<\/em>\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0(2008) and\u00a0United States v. Miller<\/em>\u00a0(1939) on \u201cdangerous and unusual weapons\u201d and military arms \u2013 that machineguns were not covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment. However, machineguns were not at issue in either case, and the court determined that the question of whether restrictions on military or \u201cdangerous and unusual weapons\u201d were consistent with historical firearm regulations was more properly addressed at the second step of the\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0analysis. The weapons at issue satisfied the first\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0step, being bearable arms covered by the Second Amendment\u2019s plain text.<\/p>\n

To meet its burden under the second step, the government proffered only two potential historical analogs: old English common law, which prohibited riding or going armed with dangerous or usual weapons, and a North Carolina case from 1824 that recognized the offense of arming oneself \u201cwith dangerous and unusual weapons, in such a manner as will naturally cause a terror to the people.\u201d The Supreme Court in\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0considered that such English laws (dating back to the Middle Ages, \u201cmore than 450 years before the ratification of the Constitution, and nearly 550 years before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment\u201d) were predicated on the manner in which arms were carried or displayed in public rather than the sole fact of being armed, and in any event, had \u201clittle bearing on the Second Amendment adopted in 1791.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Besides noting that \u201cthe government has barely tried to meet\u201d its mandatory burden under step two, Judge Broomes ruled that neither example succeeded as a sufficiently relevant analog because the law at issue criminalized simple possession \u201cwithout regard to whether the weapon is carried or otherwise employed.\u201d The statute Morgan was charged under \u201crequires no more than possession, and, more importantly in an as-applied challenge, the indictment in this case alleges nothing more.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Significantly, the court declined to make any finding that machineguns were \u201cdangerous and unusual\u201d or \u201chighly unusual in society at large,\u201d pointing to the fact that machine guns have been in existence for more than 100 years, with currently over 740,000 legally registered machineguns in the United States. \u201c[E]ven today, 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 so long as he complies with the National Firearms Act\u2019s requirements to obtain and possess the weapon. In that sense, machineguns are not unusual.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Everytown<\/a>\u00a0and other\u00a0gun control groups<\/a>\u00a0reacted with dismay to the decision, and several news stories on the case highlighted the apparently sinister fact that Judge Broomes was appointed to the court by former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump. Rather than \u201cbrazenly put[ting] the deadly agenda of the gun lobby over the safety of Kansans,\u201d as Everytown alleges the\u00a0Morgan<\/em>\u00a0court opted to do, it was clear that the prosecutors\u2019 failure to discharge their evidentiary burden left the court with little choice, being obliged to apply the law as laid down by\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cthe Supreme Court has indicated that the\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0analysis is not merely a suggestion\u201d).<\/p>\n

Further, contrary to assertions that the \u201creckless\u201d ruling allows \u201cthe possession of fully automatic weapons\u201d and places \u201cthe safety of all Americans\u2026 in jeopardy,\u201d as one op-ed\u00a0claimed<\/a>, the decision was limited to an as-applied challenge. The immediate outcome was the dismissal of the charges against Morgan without invalidating the federal machinegun law, meaning that for everyone else, machineguns are still illegal to possess outside of the limited circumstances permitted by federal law.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Far from the ruling opening the door to mayhem and carnage in the streets, as the exaggerated reaction of the anti-gun crowd would suggest, a disinterested observer need only consider the situation in the gun control utopia of Chicago. A lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0that predates the ruling, filed by the City of Chicago in coordination with Everytown, admits that federal and state law notwithstanding, criminals (\u201cextremely dangerous and irresponsible individuals\u201d) have already been illegally installing machinegun conversion devices to make guns into fully automatic weapons with \u201cmilitary-grade firepower,\u201d and using the guns to \u201ccause chaos on public streets and roadways\u201d and \u201cin drive-by homicides and assaults.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

As Vice President Kamala Harris doubles down on her campaign promises to implement an\u00a0extreme gun control agenda<\/a>\u00a0if elected (including a ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms), the ruling in the\u00a0Morgan<\/em>\u00a0case is a welcome reminder that, in the\u00a0words<\/a>\u00a0of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in\u00a0Heller<\/em>, the \u201censhrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, of course under Bruen’s Text History and Tradition test, ALL guns ban laws are unconstitutional Court Rules Federal Machinegun Law Cannot Be Justified under Bruen A district court in Kansas has ruled that the federal law prohibiting the possession of \u201cmachineguns\u201d failed the test set out in\u00a0New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass\u2019n, Inc. … 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-104186","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\/104186","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=104186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104187,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104186\/revisions\/104187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}