Under the Second Amendment and the Bruen decision, a lot of gun laws are going to come crashing down.
One that did was, surprisingly, the federal ban on machine guns. The argument was that there’s no historical analog to banning a type of weapon, so it’s unconstitutional. Even the whole “in common use” thing was ripped apart when the judge noted how many full-auto firearms are in private hands in the United States.
That was the good news.
The bad news, such as it is, is that the feds are appealing the ruling.
A month after a federal judge dismissed machine gun possession charges in Kansas based on the Second Amendment, federal prosecutors are appealing to the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Tamori Morgan had been indicted by a grand jury in April 2023 in U.S. District Court in Wichita. Those two counts of unlawful possession of a machine gun were dismissed Aug. 21 by U.S. District Judge John Broomes.
Broomes wrote that the prosecution “fails to meet its burden to demonstrate that possession of the types of weapons at issue in this case are lawfully prohibited under the Second Amendment.”
Prosecutors filed the appeal with the 10th Circuit on Sept. 20 but as of Wednesday had not yet filed documents detailing their arguments.
While the 10th Circuit covers a number of very pro-gun states, most of the judges there were appointed by Democrats.
That shouldn’t matter. All that should matter is the law and the Constitution itself, the highest law in the nation. The party that nominated them should be irrelevant.
And all supermodels should adore me and wish for an intimate night alone with me. That ain’t gonna happen either.
Presidents from both parties pick judges for various openings based on their interpretations of those laws. They want people who mirror their own views and are willing, if necessary, to rationalize those views in spite of the Constitution.
And the 10th Circuit is likely full of judges who were chosen for their jobs, in part, on their anti-gun views.
So yeah, the odds aren’t great for the forces of good in this one.
However, that’s also not the end of the trip. Whoever loses the next phase of things will ask for an en banc review of the previous ruling, which will then lead to the losing party seeking the Supreme Court’s take on this.
I’d love to tell you that SCOTUS would overturn the machine gun ban so far David Hogg would actually grow facial hair, but after Rahimi, I’m just not that confident. It’s possible that they might just overturn the 1986 machine gun ban, which would still be a step in the right direction, though not as good of a step as we might like.
Either way, this is yet another case we’ll need to keep an eye on as it works its way through the courts. Whatever you do, though, don’t try to sell your buddy a machine gun just because this case is where it is. I mean, you should be allowed to, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be legal to do so, and unless you want to also be a potential test case and risk losing your right to keep and bear arms, you should probably let someone else be the guinea pig.
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