{"id":118165,"date":"2026-08-07T11:12:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T16:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=118165"},"modified":"2026-08-07T11:12:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T16:12:18","slug":"118165","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=118165","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Legal Experts Weigh in on SCOTUS ‘Assault Weapon’ Cases<\/a><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court<\/a>\u00a0will finally hear not just one case about bans on so-called assault weapons, but two. They’ve basically combined two different cases, particularly after the lower courts got pretty damn stupid in their own rulings.<\/p>\n

And that’s good news for us.<\/p>\n

Or is it?<\/p>\n

So far, pretty much everyone expects the Court to rule against these bans, even anti-gun attorneys, but\u00a0let’s understand exactly why.<\/a><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Bruen\u00a0ruling established a\u00a0two-step test<\/a>\u00a0lower courts are to use when assessing restrictions on firearm possession. The majority said courts must first assess whether the regulated conduct is covered by the Second Amendment\u2019s plain text, and if so, determine if that regulation is consistent with the nation\u2019s \u201chistorical tradition of firearm regulation.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Turning to\u00a0Viramontes<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Grant<\/em>, Williams observed how the 2nd and 7th Courts of Appeals effectively failed to properly adopt\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u2018s two-step framework when considering the challenges to the respective laws.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Viramontes<\/em>, Williams noted that the 7th Circuit \u201cessentially stops the argument at step one\u201d by analogizing AR-15s to \u201cautomatic weapons\u201d like M-16s, which it found are \u201cpresumptively not covered by the Second Amendment\u201d under existing SCOTUS precedent. Meanwhile, in\u00a0Grant<\/em>, he said that the 2nd Circuit focused more on the second step by accepting Connecticut\u2019s \u201chistorical analogues\u201d regarding bans on \u201ccertain types of knives\u201d and \u201cmachine guns,\u201d and started \u201cto slip closer and closer\u201d to a framework rejected by the Supreme Court in\u00a0Bruen<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The attorneys also considered the possibility that the Supreme Court may address the lawfulness of restrictions on\u00a0gun-magazine size<\/a>\u00a0in its decision. The sole question\u00a0agreed<\/a>\u00a0to by the justices is whether the Second and 14th Amendments \u201cguarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Williams opined that \u201cit\u2019s entirely possible you could see these connected in this decision\u201d because \u201cit\u2019s really kind of hard to separate the magazine out from the firearm to the extent that an AR-15 comes with a standard magazine; it\u2019s generally a 30-round magazine.\u201d He furthermore noted these guns\u2019 wide use among the American public.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Proctor is a bit more doubtful about the magazine aspect here, but admits it could happen. That would be fantastic news, too, because the magazine restrictions are particularly stupid and have even fewer historic analogs than weapons restrictions.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Viramontes<\/em>, the court there basically just decided that because AR-15s look like M-16s and fire the same round, they might as well be the same gun, which was particularly grotesque considering the Bruen decision. There was no grounds for such a statement, particularly since the\u00a0legal definition of a machine gun<\/a>\u00a0is something the AR-15 does not meet.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the court in\u00a0Grant\u00a0<\/em>used bans against things like Bowie knives to justify the ban, as well as the whole machine gun thing, which makes no sense, really, because Bowie knives are available on Amazon right now and aren’t firearms. We’ve already talked about the machine gun thing.<\/p>\n

See, what happened in both of these cases is that the judges rationalized their decisions. They didn’t do what the law demanded; they twisted things until they made it seem like the law called for what the judges wanted to do from the start. That’s not how a legal system is supposed to work. Unfortunately, this is what happens when you introduce humans into a system.<\/p>\n

Luckily, the consensus is, in fact, that the\u00a0Supreme Court<\/a>\u00a0will address this when they hear these cases. I sincerely hope that the magazine thing is addressed, too, even though I’m doubtful it will be.<\/p>\n

What we really need here is for the Supreme Court to not just end these bans on so-called assault weapons, but to frame it in such a way that there’s no hope for lawmakers to try and find an end-around, because we all know that’s what they’re going to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Legal Experts Weigh in on SCOTUS ‘Assault Weapon’ Cases The Supreme Court\u00a0will finally hear not just one case about bans on so-called assault weapons, but two. They’ve basically combined two different cases, particularly after the lower courts got pretty damn stupid in their own rulings. And that’s good news for us. Or is it? So … 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-118165","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\/118165","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=118165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118166,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118165\/revisions\/118166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}