Townhall Media Is Hiring!
Elon Musk's Favorability Rate Plummets Amid Feud With Trump
Leftist Hack Has a Ridiculous Pot Meets Kettle Moment While Blasting Scott Jennings
Joe Biden's Doctor Just Pleaded the Fifth
Kamala’s Gut Check: How Tim Walz Became the Wrong Man for the Job
Cotton Takes on China: New Bill Would Cut Red Tape to Mine Critical...
NVIDIA Hits $4 Trillion: The AI Chip Titan Outpaces Apple and Microsoft in...
Anti-ICE Protesters Attack Agents Outside SF Court. It Doesn't End Well for Them.
Communist NYC Mayoral Candidate Called to Redistribute Luxury Homes to the Homeless
Pro-Palestinian Activists Vandalize Homes of University Regents
This European Country Reinstated Border Controls to Stop 'Asylum Seekers'
At Dulles, Police K9 'Freddie' Is Headed Back to Work After Being Kicked...
A Man Was Shot Dead After Opening Fire at a Border Patrol Facility....
Time's Up for CA: Trump's DOJ Sues Over Title IX Violation
America's Largest Teachers Union Just Severed Ties With the Anti-Defamation League
Tipsheet
Premium

Did Feds Just Open the Door for Machine Guns?

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

In the wake of the Hearing Protection Act's inclusion in the controversial budget bill, gun owners are feeling pretty good, all things considered. We didn't get the short-barreled rifles via the SHORT Act, at least not yet, but getting suppressors is big.

And a recent change by the DOJ on suppressors might open the door for more.

See, for a while, the DOJ argued that suppressors weren't arms under the Second Amendment, so their inclusion on the NFA was perfectly constitutional. This was, of course, nonsense, but that was the position.]

Yet the DOJ under Attorney General Pam Bondi took a look at its position on a number of gun cases and modified them.

The best case was that they'd just stop fighting them, but that was unlikely to happen. Instead, in that suppressor case, they changed their arguments in a way that's pretty interesting.

The full post reads:

FPC LEGAL ALERT: The federal government has changed its position in a criminal case where it previously argued that suppressors aren't protected by the Second Amendment because they're accessories and not arms. The government now argues that: 

1) "[T]he Second Amendment protects firearm accessories and components such as suppressors" 

2) "[R]estrictions on the possession of suppressors burden the right to bear arms, and a ban on the possession of suppressors or other similar accessories would be unconstitutional" 

3) The NFA is constitutional because it's "a modest burden" and not a ban 

4) The 3-judge panel should rehear the case and correct its analysis, rather than going en banc 

You can read the filing here: 
https://firearmspolicy.org/peterson

Now, acknowledging they're firearms is big, but the truth of the matter is that going forward, this isn't a significant argument should the HPA remain in the budget bill because suppressors will then be legal across the board.

However, the government's argument here is that the current laws on suppressors are constitutional because there's no ban on a category of arms. It's just a mild annoyance, basically.

It's a major annoyance, but I digress.

See, what struck me as interesting here is that machine guns, which are included on the NFA list, are also arms, no matter how you care to cut it. They're literal firearms, after all. They, took, have the same regulatory scheme as suppressors, with one major exception.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed a machine gun ban into place. It banned any machine gun made after that date from being transferred between private citizens. 

That is a ban, and since it is, by the DOJ's own admission in a similar enough case, that's unconstitutional.

Of course, I'm not an attorney, so I might be completely off-base here, but this still strikes me as a rather stunning admission by the Department of Justice, and I actually can see this being used to open the door for machine gun legalization via the courts. I doubt we could get it through the legislative process, but if the judicial branch were to do it, that would be downright glorious.

Recommended

Trending on Townhall Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement