The clock is ticking down for several key Supreme Court cases that impact the firearms community.
The first of these cases is United States v. Rahimi which concerns the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), a federal law that prohibits individuals subject to certain domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms.
The case questions whether this law violates the Second Amendment rights of those individuals given that such a prohibition, based upon limited due process, is unsupported by the historical tradition of gun regulation in the United States, as required by the Bruen decision.
The second case is Garland v Cargill which revolves around whether the ATF exceeded their administrative authority by ‘reinterpreting’ bump stocks as “machine guns”, in direct opposition to years of rulings to the contrary. In layman’s terms, the question is whether administrative agencies, wielding great deference in interpreting statutes, can effectively write new law without being empowered to do so by the Legislature.
I will report on the rulings as they are issued.
