School zones are generally annoying for most people because, at least during certain hours of the day, you have to slow down. The fact that in some towns, you can’t go anywhere without catching one or two school zones during those hours just makes it worse.
I get the reasoning for them, but that doesn’t make it any more enjoyable to creep along, especially when you’re in a rush.
A Montana man’s brush with a school zone didn’t result in a speeding ticket, though. As annoying as that might be, it’s still a big old nothing, all things considered. No, this man ran afoul of the gun-free school zone.
And he was in his own yard when he did it.
I touched on this case earlier in the week.
Now, Jacob Sullum over at Reason took a swing at it, and he got into the bizarre reason this case isn’t already dead and buried.
After disposing of the statutory issue, Watters addressed the question of whether Metcalf’s prosecution was consistent with the Second Amendment, which according to Bruen generally protects the right to carry guns for self-defense outside the home. Under Bruen, any exceptions to that general rule have to be grounded in historical tradition, which requires the government to identify “relevantly similar” analogs to a contemporary restriction.
In this case, Watters acknowledged, the government had failed to do that. The Supreme Court has said schools themselves qualify as “sensitive places” where guns can be banned without violating the Second Amendment, and the historical statutes cited by the government supported that conclusion. But that does not necessarily mean a buffer zone extending 1,000 feet in every direction from school grounds is also a “sensitive place,” and none of the laws that the government cited had such a broad effect.
That should have been it.
Unfortunately, Judge Watters decided that she needed to make the government’s case for them.
After concluding that the government failed to make the case that Bruen requires, Watters tried to fill the gap. She ultimately ruled that early laws prohibiting gun possession near polling places on or around election day sufficed to meet the Bruen test.
In Metcalf’s appeal, his attorney, Russell Hart, argues that such laws are not “relevantly similar” to the Gun-Free School Zones Act. According to the Supreme Court, that determination requires considering both the motivation for a gun regulation (the “why”) and the extent of the burden it imposes (the “how”). Hart says the Gun-Free School Zones Act fails on the latter point.
This is the aftermath of Rahimi.
See, while Rahimi was supposed to clarify the ruling, it actually introduced a lot more confusion. Do prohibitions against guns near polling places back in the day equate to laws against carrying guns in your own yard? Do “buffer zones” amount to the same thing? Rahimi clarified nothing.
And that’s me being generous to Watters.
After all, I don’t think they are relevantly similar either. I also don’t think such laws are applicable when you’re in your yard, even if you’re on the sidewalk.
I also don’t really find it as a good thing for a judge to apparently decide to do the government’s job for them, looking for ways to uphold gun control laws by introducing facts that don’t seem to have been brought up during the case itself.
Read the full article here
