SCOTUS: Stun guns protected by the second amendment
Big news today as the Supreme Court unanimously told the Massachusetts Supreme Court that it got it wrong when it ruled that stun guns are not protected by the second amendment:
The Court has held that the Second Amendment ex- tends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding, District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 582 (2008), and that this Second Amend- ment right is fully applicable to the States, McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 750 (2010). In this case, the Su- preme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massa- chusetts law prohibiting the possession of stun guns after examining whether a stun gun is the type of weapon contemplated by Congress in 1789 as being protected by the Second Amendment. 470 Mass. 774, 777, 26 N. E. 3d 688, 691 (2015).
A concurring opinion by Alito blasts MA:
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was either unable or unwilling to do what was necessary to protect Jaime Caetano, so she was forced to protect herself . . . To make matters worse, the Commonwealth chose to deploy its prosecutorial resources to prosecute and convict her of a criminal offense for arming herself with a nonlethal weapon that may well have saved her life. The Supreme Judicial Court then affirmed her conviction on the flimsiest of grounds.
March 21st, 2016 at 5:35 pm
Now can this ruling be applied to today’s other (ludicrous) decision that a post office, yeah even it’s parking lot, is hallowed ground not to be traversed with a firearm?
March 21st, 2016 at 8:37 pm
That’s a slap in the face! 🙂
March 21st, 2016 at 9:37 pm
Fascinating that this was a unanimous decision. I note the strict construction of the term “arms” which on its face, did not restrict Americans to just guns. And, yet, communist enclaves hold to “intent to go armed” laws, such as New York’s notorious knife laws based on whether the knife might be viewed as a weapon.
March 21st, 2016 at 9:46 pm
But given another Heller or McDonald case again, I bet the liberal justices will still vote to overturn those decisions. They tried to overturn Heller with McDonald. If they believed in precedent on the liberal side, McDonald would have been 9-0.
Liberals know stare decisis is for suckers. They’d easily “compromise” on a non-deadly tool like a stun gun to make it look like they have really changed.
March 21st, 2016 at 11:18 pm
I noted from Alito’s concurrence that the unanimous decision of the court was provided ‘grudgingly’.
What do you want to bet the actual vote was 4-4 against, but Alito went to all the down-votes and pointed out that the Mass court was absolutely and definitively reading previous Supreme Court decisions, if not perversely, but backwards. And if this was the signal the court wanted to send, then that’s a green light to judges all over the country to start ruling as they see fit, as long as they re-arrange the words in the Supreme Court decisions into a pleasing anagram. Roe vs Wade, for example, is ripe for a fresh perspective… or perhaps the ACA challenges.
In any event, deciding in any other way other than to say “No, you’re wrong, completely backwards, and you’re assholes to boot, now go do it right” would have flooded the Supreme Court with non-compliant rulings from all over the country, and they can only grant cert to so many, leaving so many others to stand for lack of capacity on their part to whack the moles.
March 22nd, 2016 at 5:56 pm
Your title: False. The 2A protects nothing. It merely recognizes God-given rights possessed by all citizens.
Nothing in the so called “bill of rights” bestows or protects anything. It is, by our founders’ own admission, a recognition and consecration of rights no man may bestow or remove.
March 23rd, 2016 at 5:36 am
Now that Massachusetts has to apply the 2A to stun guns, when will it have to apply the 2A to real guns?
March 23rd, 2016 at 12:41 pm
Mark, I fear that Asshatchusetts will simply apply the same permitting and licensing currently used for handguns to stun guns.