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Post-Bruen gun control law challenges: The fix is in [1]

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Date: 2023-02-02  

Today, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unconstitutional the federal law which prohibits people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms.

In making the ruling, the Federalist Society-stacked court completely disregarded the federal government-provided historical examples of 17th-and 18th century regulations that disarmed “dangerous” persons, blithely claiming that those examples did not “exactly” fit the qualifications of today’s federal law — as if early Americans would have been ok with allowing court-observed wife beaters and child abusers access to guns while awaiting full trial for their violent charges.

This follows a Trump-appointed district judge’s temporary restraining order of much of NJ’s new concealed carry law. Judge Renee Marie Bumb ruled that she doesn’t see an “exact” historical equivalent to the new law, stating the state “may regulate conduct squarely protected by the Second Amendment only if supported by a historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

In Delaware: A federal district judge, apparently believing she is hopelessly constrained by Clarence Thomas’ gun-lobby authored Bruen historical guidelines, has paused parts of that state’s “ghost gun” legislation.

In New York state, W -appointed hack District Court Judge Glenn Suddaby struck down much of NY’s new concealed carry law because NY state failed to show “three analogous firearm laws in the 18th or 19th century.” (Below, quoted from article):

Why three? No one really knows. One law can’t form a “tradition,” Suddaby said, citing the Supreme Court’s historical analysis in Bruen. And, well, two laws might “come closer to constituting a tradition, [but] they can also appear as a mere trend.” And trends, apparently, can’t be traditions. So three it is. If the government can’t produce at least three analogous gun laws from before Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, then it can’t regulate today. The analysis that follows from this strange method would be hard to parody.

As any professor of American history could tell you, there was little or no homogeneity of local and state laws in pre-20th America, on any public policy — taxes, borders, education, criminal code. While, sparsely-populated rural Vermont, for example, might have refrained from imposing gun restrictions, New Jersey, as early as 1799 (post-BOR and 2nd Amendment) passed laws to disarm disorderly persons and armed assemblies. (page 16/44 in pdf).

I want to point something out about what I just linked to regarding NJ’s early law: that law — and all other early American gun control laws — generated absolutely no claims or cries or protests of “rights being infringed” whatsoever.

Just a few examples of Founding and early American-era gun control ordinances which no one considered to be an “infringement” of any kind:

1) Boston: residents prohibited from storing firearms in residences; residents required to store all guns in an unloaded state

2) Virginia: all weapons — including (and especially, firearms) — prohibited from being carried concealed

3) Georgia: ditto, immediately above for

4) Tennessee: ditto, again above for

This is 150+years before the gun lobby, in a 1970’s smoke-filled room, hashed out a strategy to rewrite the Second Amendment, and formed a deal with the Reagan Republicans to sell a perverted fairy tale to the public, creating a history that never existed.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/2/2150794/-Post-Bruen-gun-control-law-challenges-The-fix-is-in

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