Gun Owners Nationwide Cheer as U.S. Supreme Court Smacks Down Massachusetts Over its Stun Gun Ban — Says the ban contradicts Heller
Springfield, VA -(AmmoLand.com)- Antonin Scalia would have been pleased.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed an anti-gun decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and upheld the 2008 Heller decision in the process.
The Massachusetts case involved a 4’11” woman who was being threatened by an ex-boyfriend, who was nearly a foot taller. She pulled a stun gun and chased him away.
While that was good news for her, this is where things got dicey. Her possession of the stun gun violated the Bay State’s ban on “electrical weapons.”
She was tried and convicted, with the state supreme court ultimately holding that her possession of a stun gun was not protected by the Second Amendment since it represented technology that could not have been foreseen in 1791.
But what about speech that is transmitted via computers, radio and TV? Is that not protected by the First Amendment since this technology did not exist in the eighteenth century?
This was the exact point made by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas in their concurring opinion:
Electronic stun guns are no more exempt from the Second Amendment’s protections, simply because they were unknown to the First Congress, than electronic communications are exempt from the First Amendment, or electronic imaging devices are exempt from the Fourth Amendment.
As for the brief opinion in Caetano v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court rejected claims by Massachusetts that stun guns are not protected by the Second Amendment because they are “dangerous and unusual” or because they must be supposedly suitable for warfare.
In each instance, the Court said the Massachusetts opinion was inconsistent with Heller.
You can read GOA’s amicus brief in the original Heller case here — and contribute here to help with GOA’s current caseload, like fighting the 1986 ban on machine guns.
About Gun Owners of America (GOA):
Gun Owners of America (GOA) is a non-profit lobbying organization formed in 1975 to preserve and defend the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. GOA sees firearms ownership as a freedom issue. `The only no comprise gun lobby in Washington’ – Ron Paul.
For more information, visit: www.gunowners.org.