The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an assault weapon ban challenge. This is fantastic news, and I thoroughly enjoyed breaking that particular story just minutes after the list was released. I wasn't the first to notice, mind you, and I don't know that I was the first to have a story published, but I was right there, and that was fun, especially because the subject mattered.
We've wanted the Court to hear a hardware case for some time, and an assault weapon ban was high up on the list for what we want to see struck down.
However, it's not the totality of the hardware issues.
For example, we'd really like to see magazine restrictions killed as well.
While it's great that the Supreme Court has agreed to take up the "assault weapon" issue, there's another one that may even be more important to Second Amendment advocates — bans on gun magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
Many, if not most modern semi-automatic standard handgun magazines hold more than 10 rounds — particularly when the weapon is chambered for smaller rounds, such as 9mm or .22 cal.
Because they come standard from the manufacturer, they're also "in common use."
But in the meantime we'll take whatever the court will give us.
Of course, the court's decision to hear the case doesn't guarantee that they'll rule that the weapon is lawful for private ownership, but given the "in common use" standard, it's impossible to imagine the court ruling otherwise.
And it's also about time.
The nomenclature that anti-gun lawmakers, activists, and journalists like to use is "high-capacity magazines," even though they are, in fact, the standard from the manufacturer. They're standard capacity because they are as their creators intended. Granted, these aren't divine creators or anything, but the implication with that term is that they're somehow unique or secondary to the function of a rifle or handgun in that capacity.
They're not.
But let's also understand that capacity bans are even more ridiculous than bans on certain types of guns, if for no other reason than magazines aren't serialized or even controlled in most states, which means it's trivial to drive across state lines, buy up the standard magazines, go home, and use them to your heart's content. Especially since many such laws include grandfather clauses for pre-existing magazines. There's literally no way to tell if your magazine was bought before a given date or not unless the gun didn't exist prior to the deadline.
And that doesn't get into some of the moronic avenues anti-gun jurists have used to justify such restrictions. They've claimed they're not "arms" under the Second Amendment, even if the gun must have a magazine to function. The rationale is, I suppose, that since the gun still works with a low-capacity magazine, the Second Amendment is satisfied.
But the originalist understanding of the Second Amendment, which the Supreme Court clearly favors these days, is that it was created as a bulwark against both tyranny from our own government and foreign invasion. That means "weapons of war" and the necessary components with which to fight that invasion.
That means standard capacity magazines for both our rifles and handguns, and both see use on today's battlefields.
We shouldn't need the Supreme Court to lay down the law on this, but we do. The arguments that have been used to justify such bans are unacceptable in a free society, so it's time to set the record straight.
I'm glad we're getting an assault weapon ban case, and I suppose it's possible that the Court will address all hardware bans through the decision, but I'm not holding my breath. That's not how the Supreme Court seems to work, unfortunately, but I've been wrong plenty of times in this life, and I'll be wrong plenty more before I'm done, I'm sure. Hopefully, this is one of those examples.
