Does the Second Amendment really protect assault weapons? Four courts have said no.
My red state would never pass a law like this.
Does the Second Amendment really protect assault weapons? Four courts have said no.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/22/does-the-second-amendment-really-protect-assault-weapons-four-courts-have-said-no/?utm_term=.5b7e159ae75d
by Meagan Flynn and Fred Barbash February 22 Email the author
Almost exactly a year ago, a federal appeals court considered whether a Maryland law banning assault weapons was unconstitutional.
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“Nine terrified children ran from one of the classrooms when the gunman paused to reload, while two youngsters successfully hid in a restroom,” Judge Robert B. King of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit wrote in the majority opinion. “Another child was the other classroom’s sole survivor. In all, the gunman fired at least 155 rounds of ammunition within five minutes, shooting each of his victims multiple times.”
The court ruled that the ban on assault weapons like the one Adam Lanza used at Sandy Hook — like the one that police say Nikolas Cruz confessed to using at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14 and that Omar Mateen used at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub in June 2016 and Stephen Paddock used from the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas on Oct. 1 — was constitutional.
It was not the first time a federal appeals court had ruled that a ban on assault weapons was permissible under the Second Amendment. It was the fourth time in the past decade. In fact, no federal appeals court has ever held that assault weapons are protected.
The question of assault weapons was not addressed by the Supreme Court when, in 2008, it held for the first time in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, went out of his way to say that the right “is not unlimited.”
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Five months later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reached the same conclusion as it considered laws in New York and Connecticut that prohibited the possession of semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity magazines............................
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