by William Kirk
Hello again everyone. Welcome to Washington Gun Law tv. I'm Washington Gun Law President William Kirk. Thanks for joining us. Hey, we're going to go out to Hawaii, never good news when we're going out to Hawaii. This is the case out of the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii. It is a challenge to the federal prohibitions on possessing short barrel shotguns and machine guns. That's right. We're talking about a challenge to that in the state of Hawaii, so we know exactly how this challenge is going to go. So the ruling itself is not what we're going to talk about, and it really will shock nobody. The reasoning used however, is incredibly alarming and it's incredibly alarming because it's not the first, the second or the third time we've seen it. In fact, we're beginning to see this reasoning pop up more and more and more. And candidly, this becomes the newest playbook and how they're just going to disarm all of you. And I'll explain in just a moment. So today, let's geek out for a few minutes and let's talk about, this is how they'll just ignore the Second Amendment.
Okay, so who is today's video sponsor? Taylor Freelance. No, seriously. Who's today's video sponsor? Taylor Freelance. Taylor Freelance. Okay. You realize what Google is going to do to this video if we have Taylor Freelance advertise on this channel. Okay, well, here goes Nothing. Alright. Hey, listen, before we get going too far down the road, we're going down, proud to announce that this video is brought to you by Taylor Freelance. That's right, American owned. American made right there in Bellingham, Washington. They're making some of the best components for your, you know what out there. Now listen, this is normally where I'd put all the cool B-roll up and show you all the cool things that they're making up there at Taylor Freelance. But if I do that, well YouTube and Google is going to get a little ticked off at us. But listen, if you just want to know what Taylor Freelance is in a nutshell, it's really this simple.
They do not make your firearm got that Google, they do not make firearms, but they will make your firearm a lot better if you're ready to take your firearm to the next level. If you're ready to customize your firearm so that you are more proficient in it, visit all of our good friends at Taylor Freelance. What? Don't mention their website. Oh yeah, that's right. Thank you. Yeah. Hey, listen for more information, go ahead and click on my partner page right there and there. You'll find the link to Taylor Freelance so you can check out all the cool things that they're doing. For more information, visit my partner page. Okay. The case we're talking about today is a case called United States v Chan. It is a challenge to couple sections of 18 United States Code Section 9 26, the federal prohibitions on possessing sharp barrel shotguns or automatic weapons unless you have jumped through all the federal loopholes.
Of course, Mr. Chan was found to be in possession of both charged under federal law. I'm sure there's a litany of Hawaii state laws that he violated as well. And his defense team moved to dismiss the indictments on a constitutional challenge. Those challenges have been summarily dismissed, a shocker to nobody. But this is what I want everyone to understand is that while there probably was a very clear roadmap using the actual acceptable Bruin test, this court has chosen to take a different route to get there, and it is a route that I am seeing more and more courts do, and this becomes the playbook for years and years. We always said if the Democrats were to get control of the United States Supreme Court, how are they going to disarm you? And we really thought it was basically just take a look at the minority opinion in Heller.
See that they believe that being in the militia is a conditioned president to having the individual right. And that's how they will do it. Well, I got news for you. They've come up with a much more simplified playbook, and it's spelled out here in the Chan case as well as just about everything lately to come out of the ninth Circuit, the seventh circuit, and the fourth Circuit. Here's what I'm talking about. Okay? When we take a look at the Constitutionality of gun legislation, we first ask ourselves this question, does the plain text of the Second Amendment cover this activity? Now, what we are talking about in Chan is the possession of a firearm. One is a short barrel shotgun, one is a machine gun. But if an arm is defined as anything which we can take in our hands and use to strike at another either in offense or defense, then I think we could all agree that short barrel shotguns and in fact automatic weapons are arms as contemplated by the Second Amendment.
So the answer to that question, of course should be yes, it does. And in that situation then it would be the government's job to justify these bans through historical analogs. And depending on how creative you want to get with the Rahimi case, they don't even have to be that close anymore. Okay? They can be relevantly similar under a more nuanced approach. But if a court which is result driven realizes like, Hey, maybe the Bowie knives and the going armed laws and things like that isn't really relevantly similar enough to assault weapon bans, and I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to make a good record to uphold these bands. What I need to do is not even require the government to get to the second step. And that's exactly what they're doing here in Chan and what they've done in the fourth Circuit and the seventh Circuit and the ninth Circuit, and it's this, they instead of asking the question, does the plain text of the Second Amendment cover this activity instead, the question is, does the plain text of the Second Amendment cover this activity?
Because we are talking about a firearm which is traditionally and commonly used only for self-defense. Where does that test come from? Well, that test come from completely made up out of thin air. But here's the thing is that this is the test that's now being used so that essentially courts can just stop the inquiry right at the very beginning. The second amendment's not even in play here, what the court should have ruled. And there is arguably a way that these bans could be upheld using the correct Bruin test, which is does the plain text of the Second Amendment cover this activity? The answer is yes, it is. We're talking about bearable arms. Can the government then justify this through historical analogs? And let us not forget that we do have a rich historical tradition in this country banning firearms and other weapons which are deemed to be dangerous and unusual.
And so therefore, if the court makes a finding, I get it may be an intellectually dishonest finding, but if they make the finding that the Second Amendment is implicated, they can still make the finding that this particular weapon is dangerous and unusual and therefore the ban fits within the nation's historical tradition of firearms regulations. And you see, when we take that part of the test that is in common use for self-defense and determine whether or not that actually means that the second amendment is implicated, we take the numerical value of the common use test, the most basic component of the common use test, and we remove it from the equation altogether so that the court doesn't have to deal with it anymore because rather that being part of the second part of the equation, they put it into the front part of the equation, which now means the numerical value of it doesn't matter at all.
It doesn't matter at all because all the court has to do then is find out, yeah, there may be millions and millions of these, but nobody actually use this. As for self-defense, this is purely an offensive weapon. It's more militaristic like it's more suitable for military, whatever nomenclature they come up with. And that is how they destroyed the common use test. At the same time, they bastardized the first part of the Bruin test. So that led the court here in the Chan case when it came to analyzing the constitutionality of the restrictions on sharp be rifles to rule as follows, joining every other district court to have considered this issue in the wake of Bruin. The court agrees with the government that short barrel rifles are dangerous and unusual weapons that fall outside the protection of the Second Amendment, and then they prove how they're just going to do away with the common use test through this same made up equation as an initial matter, it is far from clear that the number of lawfully possessed short barrel rifles should be the primary consideration in determining whether such weapons are unusual and dangerous within the meaning of the Second Amendment.
And it doesn't get any better when they uphold the ban on machine guns. Again, the reasoning here states the following, as Chan acknowledges in United States, v Henry the Ninth Circuit, oh boy, held that because machine guns are highly dangerous and unusual weapons that are not typically possessed by law abiding citizens for lawful purposes, the Second Amendment does not apply to machine guns. And that unfortunately now creates the greatest escape hatch in the history of judicial activism, which is this. All the court needs to do is just simply say, well, because I don't believe this is appropriate for self-defense, or I don't believe despite the fact that there's millions and millions of these things in circulation, that they're really being used for self-defense, that the second amendment's not even in play. And it allows the courts then to actually avoid constitutional analysis on a litany of otherwise unconstitutional firearms and other weapon bans.
This is the most dangerous playbook that we have seen so far, and United States v Chan is just the latest example. Listen, we're going to go ahead and link up the ruling down below so that you guys can geek out on it for yourself. You can see the danger of where we're going with this line of reasoning. If you've got any other questions about this or anything else related to what's left of our Second Amendment rights, you guys should know how to get ahold of Washington gun law by now. But if you don't, that's okay. That information's down there in the description box. Maybe you got an idea for a video we should be doing around here. If you do tell us by clicking on that link right there, it's probably going to be better than any idea that we come up with. Maybe you just want to subscribe to our monthly newsletter. The ability to do all of that is down there in the description box. And then finally, and most importantly, America, let's remember that part of being the lawful and responsible gun owner, like we talk about all the time, is to know what the law is in every situation, how it applies to you in any instance that you may find yourself. Until next time, thanks for watching and stay safe.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGzo3sG8cG8
Credit: William Kirk Washington Gun Law