House Democrats are holding hearings regarding an assault weapon ban bill working its way through that chamber. Cam talked a bit about it yesterday after David Hogg made an ass of himself. I mean, more than usual.

The big thing though really is about the push for the ban in a post-Bruen world.

A Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives panel on Wednesday worked toward approving legislation to ban assault-style rifles such as those used in recent mass shootings, and another bill allowing lawsuits against firearms manufacturers.

The bills face staunch Republican opposition within the House panel, as well as slim odds in the Senate, where at least 10 Republicans would be needed to allow them to be brought up for debate. Republicans in the past have rejected similar bills, citing the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s protections for the right to bear arms.

The House Judiciary Committee action comes amid growing public outrage over the criminal use of the rapid-fire weapons and follows approval last month of a limited gun control bill. read more

“Will our Republican colleagues choose to defend the weapons of choice for mass murderers?” Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, asked at the start of a long debate.

Representative Jim Jordan, the committee’s senior Republican, replied that the Democrats’ ban would make “millions of guns in the homes of law-abiding citizens” illegal. He advised Democrats to instead seek a repeal of the Constitution’s Second Amendment, an arduous process all but certain to fail.

However, Jordan is actually right. If they want to ban so-called assault weapons, amending the Constitution to repeal the Second Amendment really is their only hope.

That’s because, as I mentioned earlier, the Bruen decision is a thing that exists.

In that decision, Justice Clarence Thomas laid out a pretty strict test for gun laws if they hope to survive legal challenge. Basically, did a similar law exist on the books at the time of the nation’s founding? No, then it gets stricken down.

And you’d be very hard-pressed to find a law that existed then that basically banned an entire category of firearms, especially because they were too military-like in appearance.

I mean, since the Founding Fathers expected us to have arms exactly like the military had, if not better, as part of the nation’s defense strategy, I just can’t imagine they’d find such a law anywhere in the early United States or colonial times.

Yet House Democrats are pretending Bruen never happened. I get that they didn’t want it to happen, but it did. The decision was reached and publicized. It’s kind of important, but they’re rolling forward with their anti-gun agenda.

We should also remember that following Bruen, the Supreme Court kicked an assault weapon ban back to the lower court so that court could re-rule on that case in accordance with the Bruen decision.

So why does Congress think they get to violate the Constitution when no one else can? That’s not how it works and if the House bill somehow becomes law, that law won’t last very long, so why waste their time even trying it?

Then again, they know the Senate won’t pass the bill anyway, so clearly, this is grandstanding of the highest order.

Yet it’s grandstanding that suggests they don’t care what the Supreme Court says unless they happen to agree with it.