I always get a bit nervous whenever I hear about a Second Amendment court case.
Sure, we’ve seen more court wins for gun rights over the past few years than we had seen for quite a while, and that’s a good thing.
Really, we should be winning them all, but the Supreme Court still makes some decisions that get it wrong (at least, in my opinion as an informed non-lawyer). And there are still quite a few lower courts who openly get all of it wrong when it comes to the Second Amendment.
And then there are some courts that have a mixed bag of decisions. Sometimes they get things right, and sometimes they get things wrong. Unfortunately, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals falls into this last category, at least when it comes to the Second Amendment, and they recently issued a ruling in a case over suppressors and machine guns. Michael Clements writes,
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Sept. 1 that machine guns and suppressors are not protected by the Second Amendment under the standard set in the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.
In deciding United States of America v. Joseph Paul Berger, the three-judge panel agreed that machine guns are not in common use for self-defense and that suppressors—attachments that muffle gunshots, commonly called silencers—are not firearms because they are not necessary for a gun to operate properly.
The court also found that registration requirements for suppressors did not infringe the Second Amendment.
I’ll make no bones about my opinion on this ruling: They couldn’t be more wrong.
The Second Amendment is bluntly clear. Shall not be infringed doesn’t make exceptions.
So, I think that the court got this one completely backwards.
Hopefully, this ruling will be appealed and the Supreme Court will set it right.
