Stewart and Raich
Heartless Libertarian predicted this a week ago. Since the Supreme Court has stated in Raich that there are no states’ rights and the commerce clause is a big, fat wet blanket capable of covering every aspect of every thing ever to exist, they have now remanded the Stewart case (where the guy made homemade machine guns that were not involved in commerce and the Ninth Circuit said that was OK) back to the Circuit. TriggerFinger has some analysis and, with respect to hearing Stewart on Second Amendment grounds, notes:
A pure 2nd Amendment challenge is unlikely to succeed in the 9th Circuit.
David Hardy is extensively covering the issue as well:
There are similarities and distinctions between the two cases. On the one hand, given that the medicinal pot case says you must consider the entire of the economic activity and not just the defendant’s actions, or what was legal activity, it undercuts the original Stewart rationale. It’d be a safe bet that there is enough illegal commerce in full auto to pass any likely commerce test.
And a note to David Hardy, there have been two crimes (excluding violations of the NFA) that I know of committed with NFA registered machine guns. In 1988, a police officer in Ohio killed an informant with a registered submachine gun. Note this was after the 1986 Hughes amendment to ban transfer of new machine guns to civilians. And the other case occurred in 1992 when a doctor used one to kill another female doctor he had been stalking (again, after the 1986 ban on real assault weapons).
Matt has more.
Update: Kevin says:
It’s pretty obvious that the Supreme Court just told the 9th Circuit, “No homemade machineguns. To hell with limited powers.”
Ayup.
