The topic of guns came up a few times during the debate tonight, usually because Trump rightly claimed that Kamala Harris would go after people’s guns.
At one point, Harris tried to shut down the topic by claiming she wouldn’t come after people’s guns because she’s a gun owner.
This has never come up before. She owns a gun? Really?
Harris has made her position on guns quite clear over the years.
Two years ago in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutional right to carry guns in public for self-defense. But in Illinois, people with concealed-carry permits are committing a misdemeanor if they bring their handguns with them when they use public transportation. Among other locations, that ban covers all Metra commuter trains in the Chicago area, all of the buses and trains operated by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), and all facilities, including parking lots, associated with them. Last Friday, a federal judge deemed those restrictions unconstitutional as applied to four permit holders.
Under Bruen, the government has the burden of showing that a law is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” when it restricts conduct covered by the “plain text” of the Second Amendment. “The Court finds that Defendants have failed to meet their burden,” U.S. District Judge Iain D. Johnston writes in Schoenthal v. Raoul. “That failure is dispositive.”
Maintaining that the challenged provision of the 2013 Illinois Firearm Concealed Carry Act passes the Bruen test, Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx cited several historical precedents, none of which Johnston considered adequate. She argued, for example, that the 14th century Statute of Northampton, which forbade “force in affray of the peace” and going or riding “armed” in “fairs” or “markets,” established a tradition of regulating arms in public that was continued in early American gun laws.
In Bruen, Johnston notes, the Supreme Court “found that the Statute of Northampton wasn’t a general ban on bearing weapons; instead, the offense was arming oneself to terrify others.” That motivation, he says, “is also reflected in the corresponding state statutes.” A 1786 Virginia law, for example, made it a crime to “ride armed by night nor by day, in fairs or markets, or in other places, in terror of the county.”
The Illinois plaintiffs, by contrast, “wish to carry concealed arms in self-defense, so the Firearm Concealed Carry Act’s ban burdens Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment right for a wholly different reason than the Statute of Northampton and similar state statutes did,” Johnston writes. “A concealed arm doesn’t terrorize; it’s concealed. Consequently, these historical laws do not serve as an appropriate historical analogue.”
Foxx also cited an 1821 Tennessee law, an 1837 Arkansas law, and an 1871 Texas law, all of which restricted public possession of weapons. The Texas law required that someone who carries a pistol have “reasonable grounds for fearing an unlawful attack on his person.” In Bruen, Johnston notes, the Supreme Court viewed that law and two state court decisions upholding it as “outliers” that “provide little insight into how postbellum courts viewed the right to carry protected arms in public.” Foxx, Johnston says, offers “nothing to the contrary.”
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that illegal aliens do not have the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, due to the fact that they are not American citizens.
As reported by Fox News, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that federal law prohibiting illegal aliens from owning firearms is legal, as the Constitution does not apply to anyone who has entered the United States illegally.
The decision came as the result of an appeal by an illegal alien named Jose Paz Medina-Cantu, who had been arrested in Texas in 2022 by the Border Patrol. He was charged with illegal possession of a handgun, and illegally re-entering the country after having already been deported.
Although he pleaded guilty to the charges, his lawyers argued during his appeal that the gun charge was a violation of his Constitutional rights. In their appeal, the lawyers cited the landmark Supreme Court decision in the 2022 case New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, where the court ruled in a 6-3 majority that Americans do not have to provide a reason when seeking a concealed-carry permit. This ruling has led to numerous anti-gun laws across the country being challenged in court, with many being overturned based on Bruen’s precedent.
After hearing the appeal of the illegal’s lawyers, the three-judge panel ruled that the rights granted to American citizens by the Constitution do not apply to illegals.
A federal appeals court panel on Wednesday ruled in favor of a Texas woman whom judges described as a “non-violent, marijuana smoking gunowner,” affirming a lower court’s ruling that federal charges filed against the woman for owning a firearm as a cannabis user are unconstitutional.
“The short of it is that our history and tradition may support some limits on a presently intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon,” the court wrote in the new opinion, “but they do not support disarming a sober person based solely on past substance usage.”
Judges also pushed back against claims by Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys that cannabis users are inherently more dangerous than other Americans.
“Nor, contrary to what the government contends, do restrictions on the mentally ill or more generalized traditions of disarming ‘dangerous’ persons apply to nonviolent, occasional drug users when of sound mind,” the decision says.
DOJ has argued in this and other recent court cases that the federal law against gun and ammunition possession by someone who uses marijuana is consistent with other historical restrictions on gun ownership, such as by “mental defectives…and others whose possession of firearms is contrary to the public interests.”
But the Fifth Circuit panel disagreed.
“We must ask: why was severe mental illness a reason the Founders disarmed people, and is that ‘why’ ‘relevantly similar’ to § 922(g)(3)?” says the opinion, referring to the statute against gun ownership by people who consume illegal drugs.
Wrote the court: “It is not.”
“The government highlights nothing demonstrating that laws designed to confine (and consequently, disarm) those so severely mentally ill that they presented a danger to themselves and others map onto § 922(g)(3)’s rationale,” the panel said. “Repeat marijuana users, like repeat alcohol users, are of sound mind upon regaining sobriety, whereas those adjudged severely mentally ill often require extensive treatment and follow-up examination before they can be said to be of sound mind again.”
The Massachusetts Supreme Court on Aug. 27 struck down the state’s ban on carrying switchblade knives, finding the prohibition violates the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.
The case was brought by David Canjura, who was arrested in 2020 after a domestic dispute and charged with carrying a dangerous weapon in violation of the switchblade ban following a search by officers.
Canjura said he knew that carrying the knife violated the law but filed a motion to dismiss the charge, arguing that the ban violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms. A judge denied the motion, leading to an appeal that reached the state’s high court.
Massachusetts officials did not identify any historical bans on switchblades or their historical analogue, pocketknives, justices said on Tuesday. That means the ban is not allowed under a test outlined in a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.
“The commonwealth does not identify any laws regulating bladed weapons akin to folding pocketknives generally, or switchblades particularly, in place at the time of the founding or ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Serge Georges wrote for the unanimous court. “Accordingly, the commonwealth has not met its burden of demonstrating a historical tradition justifying the regulation of switchblade knives.”
The Second Amendment states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has also found that the right to bear arms includes items such as stun guns. In one decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, justices said that “arms” refers to “weapons of offense, or armor of defense” and “any thing that a man wears for his defense, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.”
The Massachusetts Supreme Court said that the Second Amendment covers knives, citing the historical use of knives for defense throughout U.S. history.
“In short, folding pocketknives not only fit within contemporaneous dictionary definitions of arms—which would encompass a broader category of knives that today includes switchblades—but they also were commonly possessed by lawabiding citizens for lawful purposes around the time of the founding,” Georges said. “Setting aside any question whether switchblades are in common use today for lawful purposes, we conclude switchblades are ‘arms’ for Second Amendment purposes. Therefore, the carrying of switchblades is presumptively protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment.”
Under the U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, government officials must, when facing a challenge to a regulation implicating the Second Amendment, provide proof the regulation is consistent with the nation’s history of restrictions.
While this year’s Republican Party platform makes only a passing reference to Second Amendment rights, the platform approved at the Democratic National Convention this week does not mention them at all. But it does include eight references to “gun safety” and a section that brags about the Biden administration’s accomplishments in this area while laying out an agenda of additional firearm restrictions.
That treatment of this subject is similar to the approach that Democrats took in 2016, when their platform mentioned “the rights of responsible gun owners” but did not elucidate the basis of those rights, and in 2020, when the platform did not go even that far. The 2016 platform devoted a paragraph to gun control, which became two paragraphs in 2020 and has now expanded to five. Neither of the two most recent platforms so much as alludes to respect for gun rights.
By contrast, Democrats in 2000 promised to “respect the rights of hunters, sportsmen, and legitimate gun owners.” Four years later, after the gun issue, including Al Gore’s support for banning “assault weapons,” was widely blamed for contributing to George W. Bush’s election, Democrats promised to “protect Americans’ Second Amendment right to own firearms.” The 2008 and 2012 platforms included similar language, in both cases explicitly invoking the Second Amendment, which disappeared in the 2016 platform and now does not even seem like a dim memory for Democrats.
Whatever you make of former President Donald Trump’s evolution on gun rights, which seems to reflect political expendience rather than true conviction, he at least understands the importance of paying lip service to the Second Amendment. The current Democratic Party, by contrast, is intent on pushing gun control without acknowledging any constitutional limits on it.
“When I’m back in the Oval Office, no one will lay a finger on your firearms,” Trump promised at the National Rifle Association’s Great American Outdoor Show Presidential Forum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on February 9. “It’s not going to happen….Even as they turn America into a crime-ridden, gang-infested, terror-filled dumping ground, Joe Biden and his thugs will do everything in their power to confiscate your guns and annihilate your God-given right to self-defense. During my four years, nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield.”
In their platform, the Democrats quote those last four sentences, which they consider damning: “While he ‘did nothing,’ gun violence spiked: Trump oversaw the largest single-year increase in murders in history, including a 35 percent increase in gun murders. He refused to limit the use of high-capacity magazines after a Las Vegas shooter used a dozen 100-round magazines to kill 58 people. And, when confronted with horrific gun violence, he told families to ‘get over it.'”
A U.S. judge has dismissed charges against a woman who possessed a machine gun, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that shifted the framework for how courts analyze cases dealing with constitutional rights.
Machine guns fall under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, U.S. District Judge John Broomes found.
That means prosecutors must show that the law barring possession of machine guns is rooted in historical firearm restrictions, under the 2022 Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, he added.
“In this case, the government has not met its burden under Bruen and Rahimi to demonstrate through historical analogs that regulation of the weapons at issue in this case are consistent with the nation’s history of firearms regulation,” Broomes wrote in his 10-page ruling on Aug. 21. “Indeed, the government has barely tried to meet that burden. And the Supreme Court has indicated that the Bruen analysis is not merely a suggestion.”
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority in Bruen, said that when the Second Amendment is found to apply, government officials must show that the regulation in question “is consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
In the recent ruling in United States v. Rahimi, the justices found that a law prohibiting people under domestic violence-related restraining orders from possessing guns does not violate the Second Amendment, and they clarified how courts should analyze such regulations.
“A court must ascertain whether the new law is ’relevantly similar‘ to laws that our tradition is understood to permit, ’apply[ing] faithfully the balance struck by the founding generation to modern circumstances,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. He said that some courts had misunderstood Bruen.
Broomes’s decision came after prosecutors charged Tamori Morgan, a Kansas resident, with illegally possessing an Anderson Manufacturing AM-15 .300 caliber machine gun and a machine gun conversation device.
When will Meta pull the plug on someone representing the United States at the Paralympic Games in Paris, which start later this month?
When their sport uses a gun, of course.
According to a Wall Street Journal report late last month, McKenna Geer, a member of the U.S. team, will be competing in the air rifle event. However, last month, she said she was censored for posting about shooting-related things. Which, as you know, people who shoot for sport are known to do.
Geer, 28, has a condition known as amyoplasia arthrogryposis, which affects the muscles. You’d think that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta — which runs Facebook and Instagram among its social media holdings — would read the room in terms of shadow-banning her. You’d be wrong.
“Earlier this month, Ms. Geer shared a photo on Instagram of the air rifle she used to qualify for the Paralympic Games,” the Journal reported on July 24.
“The company flagged the photo as out of line with its guidelines and informed her that nonfollowers wouldn’t be able to view her account or content in Instagram’s search, explore suggested users or similar features.”
The company’s explanation?
“Our Recommendations Guidelines help to promote content that fosters a safe community on Instagram,” it said.
Geer, who apparently knew this was a possibility, took to Instagram on July 17 to write about Meta’s decision.
“I have always feared the day the media would censor my sport and speech just because I use firearms,” she wrote. “That day has finally come.”
The White House X account posted, “It’s time,” on Wednesday alongside an image reading, “Ban Assault Weapons.”
The alarming post was thrashed online, with commenters roasting the Biden-Harris White House for hoping to destroy the Second Amendment.
One X user pointed out the irony that Harris’ running mate Tim Walz drove tens of thousands of his constituents to buy “assault rifles” in response to the deadly BLM riots of 2020 that destroyed major Minnesota cities under his watch.
New Jersey’s ban on the AR-15 rifle is unconstitutional, but the state’s cap on magazines over 10 rounds passes constitutional muster, a federal judge said Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan’s 69-page opinion says he was compelled to rule as he did because of the Supreme Court’s rulings in firearms cases, particularly the 2022 Bruen decision that expanded gun rights.
Sheridan’s ruling left both 2nd Amendment advocates and the state attorney general planning appeals. The judge temporarily delayed the order for 30 days.
Pointing to the high court’s precedents, Sheridan suggested Congress and the president could do more to curb gun-related violence nationwide.
“It is hard to accept the Supreme Court’s pronouncements that certain firearms policy choices are ‘off the table’ when frequently, radical individuals possess and use these same firearms for evil purposes,” he wrote.
Sheridan added: “Where the Supreme Court has set for the law of our Nation, as a lower court, I am bound to follow it. … This principle — combined with the reckless inaction of our governmental leaders to address the mass shooting tragedy afflicting our Nation — necessitates the Court’s decision.”
Hellbound and Down 
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