A guy in Massachusetts has been arrested for the mere possession of firearms without a license… at the same time, he was notified that his license had been revoked.
(“We know you had a license to possess and carry firearms, but we revoked it before coming here, so now you don’t have it, which means that the firearms that were legal yesterday are illegal today. Surprise!”)
Apparently, the license was revoked for no reason other than he was suspected of possessing some firearms, all of which appear to be in common use — no machine guns, no SBRs, nothing for which a federal tax stamp would be required — but some of which the Commonwealth doesn’t like.
Oh, and he had ‘thousands of rounds of ammunition’, which for many people seems really scary, but for some of us seems like a good weekend of recreational shooting.
Kudos to Justice Thomas for eliminating the second-class status of the Second Amendment, but I’d kind of like to slap him around a little for his ‘two-part test,’ i.e.,
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- Is the activity in question protected by the plain language of the Second Amendment?
- Does the law being challenged have a ‘historical analog’ from the time of the founding?
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Why not just stop after the first test? The second test encourages states like Massachusetts to simply ignore the first test… in much the same way that, for decades, states (and local jurisdictions) ignored the main clause of the Second Amendment by obsessing over the subordinate clause, mentioning a well-regulated militia.
So, instead of seeing rulings like
Is the defendant a person? Is the item in question an arm? The conviction is reversed, and the law is unconstitutional.
we’re seeing rulings like
There are historical analogs (from the 20th century… which isn’t that far from 1791, right?) for preventing people from carrying arms in ‘sensitive places,’ and while a public park doesn’t qualify as a ‘sensitive place,’ a playground does qualify. And we’ll get back to you on whether bus stops, train stations, movie theaters, and places like Times Square are sensitive enough.
I’m sure the Massachusetts legislature believes that there are similar analogs that would allow them to prevent people from owning even the most common types of firearms. And the Massachusetts Attorney General is happy to prosecute people under laws that are clearly unconstitutional by the Bruen standard.
Because, why not? In a world where words no longer really mean what they have for centuries, why pretend that laws, which are made of words, place any requirements on anyone, especially government officials?
By the way, everyone has more or less forgotten the Miller case, but we shouldn’t. In that case, SCOTUS sent the case back to the lower court because it couldn’t be sure that a short-barreled shotgun had a legitimate military use — the implication being that if any weapons are protected, it’s so-called ‘weapons of war’, and not ‘arms suitable for sporting use,’ as many politicians and pundits would have you believe.
It’s going to take a long time, and a lot of cases, for the Supreme Court to clean up the mess it’s made. In the meantime, people like this guy in Massachusetts are going to have their lives ruined by government officials who simply refuse to believe that a constitutional provision can mean what it says if it says something they don’t like.
