Put That In Your Musket And Shoot It!

As noted on Universal Hub, today in Commonwealth v. Runyan, No. SJC-10480, the Supreme Judicial Court held (i) that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states; and (ii) that even if it did, requiring people to lock up their guns would still pass constitutional muster. The former issue is currently under intense consideration in the United States Supreme Court. For much more on that, the best place to go is here.

As for the latter issue, Justice Gants makes what appears to be an unassailable point in footnote 8:

We also note that, even if a firearm were secured in the manner required by G.L. c. 140, § 131L (a ), a gun owner threatened in his or her home today would be able to fire the weapon in self-defense at least as quickly as would a gun owner in 1791, when the Second Amendment was adopted. At that time, laws were in effect requiring that gunpowder be stored separately from firearms, which meant that a law-abiding homeowner acting in self-defense would need time to load and fire a musket or flintlock pistol. See Heller, supra at 2849-2850 (Breyer, J., dissenting). A skilled soldier of that time using specially prepared cartridges required a minimum of fifteen to twenty seconds to load and fire a musket; a less skilled soldier could fire no more quickly than once per minute. Hicks, United States Military Shoulder Arms, 1795-1935, 1 Am. Military Hist. Found. 23, 30-31 (1937). A gun owner today could remove a firearm from a locked container or release a trigger lock more quickly than that.

If you're going to be an originalist, you'd better be prepared to deal with the consequences.*

*I predict without fear that the usual suspects will try with all their might to puncture Mr. Hicks's "once per minute" datum. (The good thing about this prediction is that I'll even be happy if I'm wrong . . . .)

Elementary

The Widget:

Court: U.S. Supreme Court
Judge: Souter
Subject: Guns, drugs
Tone: Subliminally persuasive
Importance: 5.5

A couple of years ago, the Supreme Court held that a defendant who traded his gun for drugs “used” the gun during the transaction for sentencing purposes. Today, in United States v. Watson, U.S. Supreme Court No. 06-571, the Court held that a defendant who traded his drugs for a gun had NOT “used” the gun during the transaction for sentencing purposes.

At first glance, these two decisions seem wacky and irreconcilable. But then you look at them for a couple of minutes, and kind of like this famous E.G. Boring thing, you start to see that they’re compatible.

Professor Reynolds says he sees no Second Amendment implications and then implies that there are Second Amendment implications.

Fickle Justices Turn Backs On Gun-Toting Career Criminals

The Widget:

Court: U.S. Supreme Court
Judge: Ginsberg
Subject: Guns
Tone: Dubious
Importance: 6.7

A felon who possesses a firearm commits a federal crime. “Career criminals” get fifteen automatic years in federal prison if they’re caught with a gun.

In a unanimous opinion today, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to tinker with the underlying statute, which includes exceptions if the convictions have been expunged or civil rights have been “restored.” There were no separate concurrences by any of the conservative justices raising the possibility that this statutory scheme might cause problems under the Second Amendment. Can we read anything into this?

Well, if Profs. Volokh and Reynolds can waste our time touting a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that assumes without deciding (and thus says effectively nothing about whether) the Second Amendment protects individual gun owners, it’s at least worth noting that there are no Printz-type dissents in today’s decision.

October 26, 2007

The Beast's Nature, Etc.

Perhaps the least fun aspect of the profession is its necessary proximity to intense human suffering. Every now and then, as in this decision, the enormity of that suffering completely overshadows the legal issues that arise.

Yet another example, by the way, of how easy access to personal firearms is one of this nation’s great ever-unfolding tragedies.