Case Law and judicial opinions have an outsized influence on our Constitutional Rights. Be it bad case law, as in Dread Scott or Roe, or good case law, as in Heller and Bruen. Right now, there is a case working its way through the US District Court for the Western District of Tennessee that could open the door to overturning the ban on automatic weapons.
BRIDGES AND A GLOCK SWITCH
There is a criminal case involving a man named Bridges, who is not a particularly upstanding citizen. Bridges was arrested with a Glock 40 S&W pistol equipped with an illegal Glock Switch. As reported in The Courthouse News Service:
“He claimed the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen required dismissal of the charge because machine guns fall under the definition of ‘arms’ used in the Second Amendment.
U.S. District Judge John Fowlkes Jr. disagreed, and cited the 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller in his decision to deny the dismissal motion.
“Heller explained that the type of weapons protected by the Second Amendment ‘were those in ‘common use at the time’ and we think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons'”, he said.
Attorney Greg Gookin, a federal public defender assigned to Bridges’ case, argued Wednesday that his client had no criminal history or prior convictions precluding him from owning and possessing a firearm at the time of his arrest.
Gookin urged the panel to conduct a historical analysis required under the Bruen ruling, and told the court there are no “historical analogues” to machine guns.
“But it’s not whether there is an analogue to a machine gun, it’s only whether there is an analogue to a ban on entire weapon types,” U.S. Circuit Judge John Nalbandian said.
“The test is: Are they dangerous and unusual?” the attorney responded. “With the proliferation of these weapons, I don’t think the government can meet that standard.”
I’d disagree with Judge Nalbandian on this point. There are well over 700,000 legal machine guns in the country right now. There would be millions more except for the Hughes Amendment. As the name implies, this was an amendment to the Firearms Owners Protection Act that disallowed any new-production fully automatic weapons to be sold to civilians in the United States, starting in 1986.
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Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Dave Funk
Member, Board of Directors
Iowa Firearms Coalition
#2A4IA
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