High Court Rejects Appeal Over Ban on Guns at Post Offices

[former9thward]

46. Ahh I guess all 8 Justices "willfully ignored that" on Monday.

In an 8-0 2nd amendment decision the SC struck down a Massachusetts law which banned stun guns. MA said the 2nd amendment did not protect stun guns whose technology was not around when the 2nd amendment was written.

Today, in Caetano v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court vacated a decision by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts that had concluded that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms does not apply to stun guns. The Court’s per curiam opinion scolded the Massachusetts court for its failure to apply the proper legal tests under D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, and quite rightly so. The court did not reach the ultimate question of whether stun guns constitute “arms” for Second Amendment purposes, however, instead vacating and remanding the state court opinion.

The Court’s per curiam opinion is brief and biting. Here it is:

The Court has held that “the Second Amendment extends, 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 Amendment right is fully applicable to the States,” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 750 (2010). In this case, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massachusetts 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).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/03/21/supreme-court-zaps-massachusetts-stun-gun-opinion/