USAToday Looks at What Bruen Test Means for Assault Weapon Bans

USA Today lost any lingering respect I had for it as a publication when it actually tried to pass off chainsaw bayonets as a common accessory added to AR-15s. Sure, they exist, but it’s not like they’re anything but silliness disguised as an accessory.

Still, a lot of people take the publication seriously for some reason, and they keep showing up in my feed like they’re a real news publication, so when they had something about the upcoming Supreme Court case on assault weapons, I decided to click.

And yet…it was…something.

Gun regulations were a big focus of the Supreme Court this year. In the coming Supreme Court season, the issue will again be in the cross-hairs.

This time, the focus will be on semiautomatic rifles like AR-15s.

Modern gun rules, the Supreme Court said in a landmark 2022 decision, can’t stray too far from historical weapons regulations to pass constitutional muster.

While the Supreme Court appeared to pull back from that controversial test just two years later, two Second Amendment decisions the conservative court handed down in June show it’s firmly in place − which could have implications for the coming showdown over semiautomatic rifles.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Saying the historical analogs don’t have to be a perfect one-to-one analog is “pulling back” from Bruen, and not an attempt to clarify that there is, in fact, some wiggle room when making those comparisons.

And the pathetic attempts since then to find analogs were so laughably awful that there’s no inconsistency even with the Rahimi decision’s “clarification.” I wish there had been, obviously, but there wasn’t.

This year, the Supreme Court struck down Hawaii’s attempt to limit where guns can be carried in public. It also ruled, in a unanimous decision, that a law blocking regular drug users from having a gun was too broad. In both cases, a majority on the Supreme Court said neither restriction could be supported by laws dating back to the 1700s and 1800s.

“It looked like the court was going to accept relatively loose analogies in applying the Second Amendment to current gun laws,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA School of Law professor and author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.” He added: “But that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.”

In the 2022 decision, the Supreme Court said a gun regulation must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Yes, I know Winkler is disappointed, but he’ll learn to get over it.

While the Supreme Court was clearly willing to listen to “looser” analogies, as Winkler puts it, there’s a limit to how far you can push it. With Hemani, they tried to compare the prohibition to drunks being barred from carrying guns, but the analogy fell apart because this went well beyond restricting carrying while under the influence. It was a lifetime ban for using a controlled substance, even if they weren’t impaired.

Wolford fell apart because the “looser” analogy was a Black Code law meant to be applied in a racist manner that had a number of problems beyond that. 

It’s not that the Court wouldn’t entertain looser analogies; it’s that the analogies freaking suck.

For the assault weapon ban case, the most likely analogy used will be a prohibition on Bowie knives dating from the 19th century, as the article above seems to agree. However, that’s probably a stretch too far, since repeating rifles not only existed at the time, but were becoming common in the home. Why were those not banned?

The truth is that experts from every side of the equation already know what the broad strokes of the assault weapon ruling will be. We’re now just worrying about the specifics. What will it mean, and what doors will be left open for anti-gunners to try and exploit? We saw what they did after Bruen, and we’ve seen the discussions following Wolford. What will come next?

Because they won’t just roll over and give up trying to restrict so-called assault weapons. They can’t recognize that they’re not going to win this fight no matter what they try. Not as things stand now, anyway, so what will follow?

We’ll have to wait and see, but it’s interesting how there’s not a single pro-gun “expert” who popped up as being interviewed. Weird, don’t you think?

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