#Trump pledges to 'roll back' Democratic President Joe #Biden’s #gun#regulations put in place by Democratic President Joe #Biden & to fire the #ATF chief during a lengthy rally speech to the #NRA on Sat, during which he accepted the influential group's #endorsement.
As many of you know already, I am especially interested in the use of #consumerProtection statutes to ground suits against irresponsible sales and marketing by member of the gun industry. In #WashingtonState, the state legislature and state AG #BobFerguson have been using this approach to deal with large capacity magazines. 1/2 #LawFedi#gunViolence#ConsumerProtection
@Properganda@sickmatter@justicesandwich@sqgl@Jonricha I always took as axiomatic that the solution to most any social ill is more speech, and not less, with which this practice of blocking dissent is at odds with. Wouldn't you want to persuade, if not dissenters, then at least those following a dissenter?
It's un-American. But also just not effective. That's why the #secondamendment allows for advocating genocide. Because that #freespeech provides a safety valve.
The shootings in Missouri today are another clarion call: every state in the U.S. can and should enact statutes to ground civil suits against irresponsible #gun manufacturers and sellers. The gun industry is fighting these statutes in court. I explain and defend the desirability, lawfulness, and constitutionality of such statutes in this article, forthcoming in Yale Law Journal Forum. Neither #PLCAA nor the #SecondAmendment invalidate these laws. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dw3rMKXX1DlHKa9GXk1bojxSgYUxsP8r/view?usp=drivesdk#LawFedi#KansasCity
This is a really interesting decision at the state Supereme Court level. Hawai’i Justice Todd Eddins beautifully outlines what many of us have known for years - the second amendment has been distorted and horribly misinterpreted by SCOTUS and that originalism is a misguided lens for modern jurisprudence. #scotus#secondamendment
The Hawaii Constitution has a provision that is the same as the 🔹Second Amendment🔹 to the U.S. Constitution.
[Hawaiian] Justice Eddins said: Even though the provisions are the same, we will not interpret them the same way, because we think the 🔸U.S. Supreme Court clearly got it wrong in Heller when it said the Second Amendment creates an individual right to bear arms.🔸
Justice Eddins then pored over the immense body of scholarship and historical research that has shown, beyond a reasonable doubt, that
👉SCOTUS was catastrophically wrong in Heller.
He even quoted this great study that refutes a centerpiece of Justice Antonin Scalia’s analysis in Heller, which was the idea that the phrase “bear arms” typically meant individual use of a weapon in 18th-century parlance.
Scholars have analyzed thousands of documents from that era and proved that Scalia was just objectively wrong:
The phrase “bear arms” was unfailingly used in a collective context, describing a militia—which makes sense, since the Second Amendment begins by saying its purpose is to protect the militia, not an individual right to own guns.
Then Eddins’ opinion goes on to analyze the real history of guns in Hawaii. And he says: “The history of the Hawaiian Islands does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others.”
This echoes the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s discussion of Dobbs and real history—but also originalism, and who history leaves out.
What’s really great about Eddins’ opinion is that it’s not just a rejoinder to Heller.
It also goes on to talk about how🔥 it’s just not practical or feasible or wise to use history as your only guide to constitutional interpretation. 🔥
He wrote: “History is prone to misuse. In the Second Amendment cases, the court distorts and cherry-picks historical evidence. It shrinks, alters, and discards historical facts that don’t fit"
The Hawaii Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion on Wednesday declaring that its
👉 state constitution grants individuals 🔹absolutely no right to keep and bear arms outside the context of military service. 🔹
Its decision rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment,
refusing to interpolate SCOTUS’ shoddy historical analysis into Hawaii law.
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the ruling on this week’s Slate Plus segment of Amicus; their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/hawaii-supreme-court-guns-case-rebuke-scalia.html?via=rss
I feel like we could just read chunks of this opinion into the record because it’s just such a delightful excavation of
both the bad history that undergirds "Bruen and Heller" before it,
as well as the larger project of conscripting judges into "historical analysis".
But I just want to read this quote from Justice Eddins: “Judges are not historians. Excavating 18th and 19th century experiences to figure out how old times control 21st century life is not a judge’s forte. History is messy.
It’s not straightforward or fair.
Bruen, McDonald, Heller, and other cases show how the court handpicks history to make its own rules.”
…#Trump’s lawyer on Thurs will be Mitchell, who was a #law clerk to Justice #AntoninScalia, the late Supreme Court #conservative. Mitchell will be standing…before …(#SCOTUS) for the 6th time & is scheduled to make his 7th trip later this month for a #SecondAmendment case, challenging a #federal#ban on #BumpStocks (a #semiautomatic#gun stock for rapid ammo reloading — cuz apparently the #FarRight thinks that’s something people need outside of war zones).
The Washington Post finally had the guts today to publish an incredible, painful, stomach-churning written and photographic portrait of the human toll in mass shootings.
These images need to be on the front page of every paper in America.
Read it if you are emotionally able to do so. Then call your US Representative and Senators.
#SCOTUS Justices on both sides of the court’s ideological divide seemed to think the #SecondAmendment does not keep legislatures from restricting #FirearmPossession after some sort of court finding that a person is dangerous. During oral arguments Tues morning, some of the justices suggested they did not have to go much further than that to decide the case at hand.
The justices were taking their first extensive look at the fallout from their 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn v. #Bruen, which requires the govt to point to historical analogues when defending #laws that limit #SecondAmendment#rights.
The decision has created considerable churn in lower courts, w/dozens of #GunControl laws declared suspect as a result of the justices’ new test.