Monday, April 9, 2018

No 2nd amendment right to own assault weapon, U.S. judge rules

Second Amendment Does Not Apply to 'Assault Weapons,' Says U.S. District Judge - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Brian Doherty:

April 6, 2016 - "Relying on certain stated or implied limitations on the weapons to which the Second Amendment applied in Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion in D.C. v. Heller (2008), U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young this week granted summary judgment to Massachusetts in a lawsuit challenging a 1998 state law that emulated the federal government's 1994 ban on certain weapons it characterized as "assault weapons." The federal ban expired in 2004 but the Massachusetts version remained in effect....

"David Worman et al argued that a 1998 Massachusetts state law that banned certain types of semi-automatic rifles and certain sized magazines violated their Second Amendment rights (and that a later attempt to apply the ban to other weapons not specifically listed originally but now considered to be illegitimate "copies or duplicates" constituted a 14th Amendment violation of due process)

"In his decision in Worman v. Baker, Judge Young declared that 'assault weapons and LCMs [large capacity magazines] are not within the scope of the personal right to "bear arms" under the Second Amendment'....

"Scalia said in Heller that some weapons of primarily military use would not necessarily be covered by the Second Amendment.... Young believes that qualities of the weapons and magazines covered by the challenged law mark them as of primarily military use....

"Young grants that 'assault weapons' under the Massachusetts regulations certainly are commonly used in America; nonetheless, such 'present day popularity is not constitutionally material'.... [Yet] Scalia wrote elsewhere in Heller, while attempting to reconcile his opinion with the 1939 Miller precedent, that:
We therefore read Miller to say only that the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns. That accords with the historical understanding of the scope of the right.
"That statement — though no more 'the words of our constitution' than Scalia's aside about the ability to ban guns 'most useful in military service' — gives weight to the plaintiffs' belief that a weapon like the AR-15, for example, which is very much 'typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purpose' and is not in weapon terms especially 'dangerous and unusual' should be protected, despite Judge Young's interpretation."

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/04/06/us-district-judge-in-massachusetts-belie
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