The Supreme Court has finally agreed to hear an assault weapon ban case. Considering the long and "storied" history behind these laws, as well as the absolute stupidity behind them, it's clear a case of it being about time.
But better late than never, I suppose, and they're hearing one now.
That means we're going to hear about the plaintiffs' briefs and amicus briefs aplenty as both sides try to make arguments for and against the law. One of the groups that has already done so is the Second Amendment Foundation.
From a press release:
Following closely on the heels of celebrating its 52nd anniversary, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have filed their opening brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in cases challenging assault weapons bans in Cook County, Illinois and Connecticut.
On June 30, the Supreme Court agreed to hear two SAF cases – Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins – challenging the prohibitions of many commonly owned rifles, including the ubiquitous AR-15, in Cook County, Ill., and Connecticut. While legal and broadly adopted by Americans all over the country for a litany of lawful purposes – including self-defense – a minority of states have sought to outright ban the possession of these types of firearms. The question presented in Viramontes and Grant is whether those states may categorically ban a widely defined class of the most commonly possessed firearms in the country. SAF’s opening brief explains precisely why the Second Amendment, and well-established Supreme Court caselaw, have already concluded that no, they may not.
“Assault weapons bans represent one of the largest and most pernicious gun rights issues facing Americans,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “The Second Amendment demands that it is ‘the People’ who get to choose what firearm is best suited to their lawful needs, not an ideologue legislator. Modern semi-automatic rifles are the overwhelming choice of Americans for all sorts of reasons – they are easy to shoot, mechanically accurate, modular and ergonomically adaptable. As a result, Americans from all walks of life choose these firearms to defend their families and their homes. Our brief today lays out exactly why politicians who hide behind their own armed security do not have the authority to ban these firearms.”
As noted in the brief, “Whatever common use may mean at the margins, AR-15s and similar semiautomatic rifles fit squarely within that category. Because ‘millions of Americans own AR-15s and…a significant majority of the States allow for possession of those rifles,’ it follows that they ‘are commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.’ A ‘categorical ban of such weapons therefore violates the Second Amendment.’”
“Reckoning day for lawmakers in Illinois, Connecticut, and elsewhere across the country, is not far away and it’s high time they are finally put in their place for infringing on the constitutional rights of citizens,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Throughout SAF’s more than 50-year history, we have fought to ensure Americans could fully exercise their Second Amendment rights, and we are optimistic this case will be a giant leap forward for the right to keep and bear arms. The ruling in this lawsuit will affect generations of lawful gun owners for years to come, and we are hopeful the Supreme Court will deposit these unconstitutional bans where they belong – in the wastebin of history.”
A minor quibble with Gottlieb here. It doesn't really belong in the wastebin of history. It should have gone into the file of aborted ideas too stupid and too vile to implement in a country that has something like the Second Amendment. Since that ship set sail many moons ago, though, the waste bin of history is the next best option.
Because these are particularly dumb laws.
Criminals don't use AR-15s by and large. There are exceptions, sure, but bans presume that these exceptions are either particularly common, particularly heinous, and/or could not be committed with any other firearm.
While there have been some particularly heinous offenses carried out with so-called assault weapons, they're not particularly common, and almost all of them could have been just as bad, if not worse, with some other kind of weapon. Virginia Tech will always come to mind. It's still the worst school massacre on American soil, and that killer had a couple of handguns he purchased during a time the state had gun rationing.
The law is very simple here. Without some kind of historic analog, bans on these guns simply cannot be permitted to stand. They're not machine guns — not that it would matter anyway, at least from my point of view — and they're not akin to anything that was regulated at the time of either the Second or Fourteenth Amendment's ratification. There's simply no real grounds for such a thing. I know they'll use Bowie knives or whatever to try and make that claim, but it won't stand because it's not remotely in the same category.
So I get where the SAF is coming from here. I agree completely.
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