Ban Assault Weapons
Updated: Jul 14, 2022

Amendment II A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
I'm all for our right to bear arms here in America with huge exceptions. There is never a reason for us to own assault weapons in society. Let's leave assault weapons where they belong, which is in the military. I don't believe in a ban of all weapons just assault weapons. I don't think mental health patients or violent offenders should have legal access to any kind of gun--period.
The Supreme Court is poised to issue a ruling in a New York gun rights case that will likely expand the scope of protections the Second Amendment affords individual gun owners who want to carry a gun outside of their residences. The biggest question in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen may not be whether a majority of justices strike down the state’s century-old handgun licensing requirement but how far that majority goes in signaling that other licensing measures created by government officials are now constitutionally suspect.
Can officials prohibit handguns in courtrooms and schools? What about college campuses or hospitals? When the Court heard oral argument in November, the six-member conservative majority seemed more interested in exploring the contours of an expanded Second Amendment than in whether it ought to be expanded. This approach to gun regulation is a change from the Court’s historical approach to the amendment, but it should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the arc of the Court’s jurisprudence in this area over the past 15 years.
The current Supreme Court is far more conservative and far more friendly to gun rights than the one that first recognized a personal right to bear arms under the Second Amendment in District Columbia v. Heller in 2008. The Supreme Court also acknowledged two years later, McDonald v. Chicago, that such protections apply to state laws and regulations. Gone since then is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a foe of expanded gun rights. In her place is Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose view of the Second Amendment is viewed by many as even more expansive than that of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the author of Heller.
For many years after the Heller and McDonald decisions, Justice Clarence Thomas, an extreme gun rights supporter, urged his colleagues on the Court over and over again to accept more Second Amendment challenges to existing gun laws. He wanted the Supreme Court to use the newly recognized “personal” right under the Second Amendment to sweep away regulations restricting the possession and use of firearms. For many years, until the arrival of the three justices nominated by President Donald Trump, Thomas’s colleagues rejected Thomas' agenda.
That was then. This is now. Now we all are waiting for the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen, an opinion that some court watchers say won’t come until sometime in late June. This case is the challenge to New York’s 108-year-old concealed handgun law. The challengers claim they shouldn’t have to show a special need to get a license to carry a gun. A majority of justices seemed skeptical of New York’s rationale for the law when they asked about it during oral argument last fall. Bruen is just the start of what some lawyers and advocates say will be a relentless effort by the Court to transform gun regulation around the United States.
The Bruen decision will come weeks after another mass shooting, another spasm of gun violence, this time in Buffalo, New York, where Governor Kathy Hochul and state legislators are promising to expand the scope of gun regulations. Will the Buffalo massacre change anyone’s mind on the Court? Not likely. The massacre of 19 children and 2 teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas won't change their minds either. They gunman was an 18 year old who had just purchased his weapons in a state that has dramatically loosened gun laws in the past decade. It is harder for an 18 year old to get a driver’s license than a gun in Texas.
To get a sense of where we are now on the Second Amendment and where we are likely headed given the Court’s current makeup, Darrell Miller, a professor at Duke Law School who is an expert on the Second Amendment and gun rights and regulations says, "The Court has firmly rejected arguments that only 18th-century weapons are protected by the Second Amendment. There’s a host of unsettled questions that I’m keeping my eye on. The lower federal courts right now are wrestling with the issue of what counts as an “arm” for purposes of the Second Amendment: Does it include large capacity magazines? Does it include AR-15s and other rifles modeled on military weapons? In Michigan, the state supreme court is set to decide whether the University of Michigan and other state universities can keep firearms off their campuses or whether that violates federal or state constitutional law. Then there’s the flood of litigation that will follow the Bruen case. I guarantee that gun rights advocates have already got plaintiffs engaged and complaints drafted and that there will be multiple lawsuits filed as soon as the Court hands down the decision in the Bruen case.
What I’m really focused on is the sleeper issue in Bruen that will determine just how radical a change we’re in for. Right now, the lower courts are using a two-step framework for deciding Second Amendment cases. The first step is a historical approach; the second step allows the government to justify its regulation through social science data or other kinds of empirical tools. One issue in Bruen is whether that second step is permissible or whether all Second Amendment questions may be answered only by reference to what is permitted by “text, history, and tradition.”
Disclosure: Miller was among a group of attorneys who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of neither party in the Bruen case, urging the Supreme Court not to apply a text, history, and tradition-only approach. He also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the pending Michigan Supreme Court case.
This is a post that was generated from an article that was edited for length and clarity.
Assault weapons are military weapons. How in the hell is an 18 year old able to go to a store and buy it like it's a sporting good?
Here I am purposely engaged in living an inspired life!
Blessings,
Rachel Mason