{"id":92460,"date":"2023-05-04T06:25:58","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T11:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=92460"},"modified":"2023-05-04T06:36:03","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T11:36:03","slug":"92460","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=92460","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Assault Weapon’ Bans Look More Legally Vulnerable Than Ever<\/a>
\nA preliminary injunction in Illinois may signal the demise of a long-running public policy fraud.<\/em>
\n\"Supporters<\/p>\n

These two guns fire the same ammunition at the same rate with the same muzzle velocity. But the one on top is an “assault weapon,” and the one on the bottom isn’t. (Illustration: Lex Villena)<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Three days after Washington\u00a0became<\/a>\u00a0the 10th state to enact an “assault weapon” ban, a federal judge temporarily\u00a0blocked<\/a>\u00a0enforcement of a similar law in Illinois. That\u00a0decision<\/a>, which was published last Friday, may signal the demise of a long-running public policy fraud that falsely depicts an arbitrarily defined category of semi-automatic rifles as good for nothing but mass murder.<\/p>\n

“Assault weapon” bans, which typically cover specific models along with features such as adjustable stocks, pistol grips, flash suppressors, and barrel shrouds, have always been\u00a0logically dubious<\/a>. And under the constitutional test that the Supreme Court recently established, they look more legally vulnerable than ever.<\/p>\n

These laws never made much sense. With or without the features that states such as Washington and Illinois have deemed intolerable, a rifle fires the same ammunition at the same rate with the same muzzle velocity.<\/p>\n

Even President Joe Biden, who\u00a0wants<\/a>\u00a0Congress to revive the federal “assault weapon” ban that expired in 2004, has\u00a0conceded<\/a>\u00a0that the law left would-be killers with plenty of alternatives that were “just as deadly.” And contrary to the\u00a0claim<\/a>\u00a0that the rifles targeted by this sort of legislation are the “weapon of choice” in mass shootings, handguns\u00a0account<\/a>\u00a0for more than three-quarters of the firearms used in such crimes and an\u00a0even larger share<\/a> of the firearms used in gun homicides generally.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court’s precedents suggest that “assault weapon” bans are unconstitutional as well as illogical. The Court has\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0the Second Amendment applies to firearms that are commonly used for lawful purposes, and last June it explicitly\u00a0rejected<\/a>\u00a0the sort of “interest-balancing” test that lower courts had previously used to uphold “assault weapon” bans.<\/p>\n

Instead of weighing a law’s purported public safety benefits against the burdens it imposes, the justices\u00a0said<\/a>, courts should ask whether it is “consistent with this Nation’s tradition of firearm regulation.” In a federal lawsuit they\u00a0filed<\/a>\u00a0immediately after Washington enacted its “assault weapon” ban last week, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) argue that the state cannot meet that test.<\/p>\n

“The only historical tradition that can remove a firearm from the Second Amendment’s protective scope,” the\u00a0complaint<\/a>\u00a0says, is “the tradition of banning dangerous and unusual weapons.” But that category does not include “arms that are in common use” for legal purposes, “as the firearms Washington has banned unquestionably are.”<\/p>\n

The SAF and the FPC note that AR-15 style rifles covered by Washington’s law “are among the most popular firearms in the nation, and they are owned by millions of Americans.” They cite survey data<\/a>\u00a0indicating that “about 24.6 million Americans have owned AR-15 or similar modern semiautomatic rifles.”<\/p>\n

The SAF and the FPC made the same argument in Illinois, and U.S. District Judge Stephen P. McGlynn\u00a0found it persuasive. In granting a\u00a0preliminary injunction<\/a>\u00a0against that state’s “assault weapon” ban, McGlynn concluded that the law was probably inconsistent with the right to keep and bear arms, adding that Illinois legislators seem to have ignored that likelihood and the Supreme Court decisions underlying it.<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0survey<\/a>\u00a0cited by the SAF and the FPC, two-thirds of the respondents who reported owning AR-15-style rifles said they used them for recreational target shooting, while half mentioned hunting and a third mentioned competitive shooting. Sixty-two percent said they used the rifles for home defense, and 35 percent cited defense outside the home.<\/p>\n

\n
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, nevertheless insists<\/a>\u00a0these rifles “have no reason other than mass murder,” because “their only purpose is to kill humans as rapidly as possible in large numbers.” Illinois Senate President Don Harmon (D\u2013Oak Park) likewise\u00a0maintains<\/a>\u00a0that killing innocent people is the “only intent” of the rifles his state banned.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Ascribing intent to inanimate objects reflects the magical thinking of politicians who argue that certain guns are inherently evil. That position is plainly at odds with a reality that courts may no longer be able to ignore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Assault Weapon’ Bans Look More Legally Vulnerable Than Ever A preliminary injunction in Illinois may signal the demise of a long-running public policy fraud. These two guns fire the same ammunition at the same rate with the same muzzle velocity. But the one on top is an “assault weapon,” and the one on the bottom … 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":[23,50,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-goobermint","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92460","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=92460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92461,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92460\/revisions\/92461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}