Judge Upholds Stun Gun Ban Despite 2016 SCOTUS Ruling

Stun guns are less lethal devices that, well, stun attackers rather than killing them outright. They’re also kind of fun to use on your drunk friends at parties, though I will specifically tell you not to test this out for yourself.

However, like anything else, bad people can use them for bad things. Some used stun guns to incapacitate people for nefarious reasons, even if only for a short time, and so some places moved to ban them.

Because we all know that if you ban something, bad people can’t find any way to get it at all.

In 2016, though, the Supreme Court found that stun guns fell under the Second Amendment and couldn’t be banned. At least, that’s my memory of the finding. Apparently, though, a judge recently figured that wasn’t really the case and upheld a stun gun ban.

New Yorkers may be able to carry a firearm for self-defense, but those seeking a less-lethal option will continue to be out of luck following a new federal court ruling.

On Monday, US District Court Judge Edgardo Ramos upheld a New York state ban and a separate New York City ban on the sale and possession of stun guns and tasers. He determined that the plaintiffs had the burden of introducing specific evidence of how common those weapons are and that they failed to show they were popular enough to be protected by the Second Amendment.

“In sum, because Plaintiffs have failed to provide any evidence that stun guns and tasers are in ‘common use’; they have clearly not ‘set forth significant, probative evidence on which a reasonable fact-finder could decide in [their] favor,’” Ramos wrote Calce v. City of New York.

The ruling makes Ramos the first and only federal judge to uphold a stun gun ban in the decade since the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued a unanimous decision signaling that such bans are likely unconstitutional. Elsewhere, more than a dozen states and localities have had their bans overturned in court or voluntarily repealed to avoid similar losses.

In 2016’s Caetano v. Massachusetts, SCOTUS unanimously vacated a Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling upholding that state’s ban on stun guns. While SCOTUS did not rule on the merits of the ban directly, its opinion dismantled the Massachusetts court’s argument that such bans are constitutional.

“[T]he court concluded that stun guns are ‘unusual’ because they are ‘a thoroughly modern invention,’” the justices wrote in an unsigned opinion. “By equating ‘unusual’ with ‘in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment,’ the court’s second explanation is the same as the first; it is inconsistent with Heller for the same reason.”

The judge’s argument was that the Supreme Court didn’t prove they were in common use, though he acknowledges they had no requirement to do so, and that the burden is on the plaintiffs to prove that they are and that they’re commonly used for lawful purposes.

The judge also rejected Justice Samuel Alito’s concurrence in Caetano, where he delves into that, saying a concurrence isn’t a binding decision. 

In other words, it sure looks to me like the judge was just trying to find a way to uphold the ban despite the clear Supreme Court precedent.

It also highlights the problem with the whole “in common use” standard. We shouldn’t have to prove that some kind of weapon is in common use just to be able to use it for our own personal defense. That language is nowhere in the Second Amendment at all, which means it’s absolute nonsense. Justice Scalia did a lot of good during his time on the bench, but he botched this one, in my humble opinion.

The good news here is that this is just one judge’s take. It will probably go up the judicial food chain, and the en banc panel will hopefully see it differently, especially as the plaintiffs know what they’ll need to provide.

Unfortunately, I doubt there have been that many studies on stun gun ownership and use, in part because it’s a less lethal device and doesn’t tend to have the same controversy surrounding it that guns do. Still, if they’re out there, hopefully the plaintiffs can find either that or some reason they shouldn’t be forced to provide such a thing.

Then again, they shouldn’t in the first place, but that’s just me.