{"id":65304,"date":"2021-02-27T08:35:45","date_gmt":"2021-02-27T14:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65304"},"modified":"2021-02-27T08:35:45","modified_gmt":"2021-02-27T14:35:45","slug":"65304","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65304","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Banning whole categories of popular guns will lose in Supreme Court<\/a><\/p>\n

On Feb. 14, President Biden marked the third anniversary of the deadly shooting incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, with an announcement that he is calling on Congress to enact \u201ccommon sense gun law reforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

As always, the details matter. The president defined \u201ccommon sense\u201d as a requirement for background checks on all gun sales, a ban on \u201cassault weapons and high-capacity magazines,\u201d and an end to \u201cimmunity for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2008, in the District of Columbia v. Heller decision, that the Second Amendment right to \u201ckeep and bear arms\u201d is an individual right that is not contingent on service in \u201ca well-regulated militia.\u201d That means the U.S. Constitution limits the federal government\u2019s power to pass laws restricting that right.<\/p>\n

Exactly where are the limits? That\u2019s always a matter of interpretation. The Heller opinion, written by the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, held that the District\u2019s law prohibiting the possession of handguns was over the line, as was its law requiring residents to keep their lawfully owned, registered long guns \u201cunloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device\u201d unless the guns were located in a place of business or in use for lawful recreational activities.<\/p>\n

Scalia wrote that the handgun ban \u201camounts to a prohibition of an entire class of \u2018arms\u2019 that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society\u201d for the \u201clawful purpose\u201d of \u201cthe inherent right of self-defense.\u201d Under any standard that the court has used, he wrote, \u201cbanning from the home \u2018the most preferred firearm in the nation to keep and use for protection of one\u2019s home and family,\u2019 would fail constitutional muster.\u201d<\/p>\n

So if the president\u2019s definition of \u201cassault weapon\u201d and \u201cweapons of war\u201d includes commonly owned firearms and magazines, it\u2019s likely that new laws banning these or seeking to create new legal liability for their manufacturers will be found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, should these laws be challenged.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s no doubt that such laws would be challenged. After Biden\u2019s statement was released, the Firearms Policy Coalition responded, denouncing what it called \u201cunconstitutional and immoral policies including bans on common semi-automatic firearms and ammunition magazines.\u201d A number of lawsuits over various state laws related to firearms ownership are already working their way toward the high court.<\/p>\n

The Heller decision was 5-4, with Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer in the minority.<\/p>\n

Former President Donald Trump campaigned as a staunch defender of Second Amendment rights, and it would not be surprising, to say the least, if the three justices he appointed to the high court share that view to some extent. Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett likely have created a solid majority to strike down broad bans on semiautomatic weapons and laws that flatly prohibit law-abiding citizens from exercising the right to carry a gun. In Scalia\u2019s words, \u201cthe enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

That won\u2019t stop the Democratic majorities in Congress, together with the president, from enacting doomed laws, or from sending fundraising letters attacking their opponents. It\u2019s always about the next election. It remains a fact that constitutional rights cannot be overridden by a majority vote, except on the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Banning whole categories of popular guns will lose in Supreme Court On Feb. 14, President Biden marked the third anniversary of the deadly shooting incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, with an announcement that he is calling on Congress to enact \u201ccommon sense gun law reforms.\u201d As always, the details matter. … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-o-the-day","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65304","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=65304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65305,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65304\/revisions\/65305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}