How the Supreme Court Must Stop the Insanity by Taking This Case by William Kirk, Esq.
Hello. Good everyone. Welcome to Washington Gun Law tv. I'm Washington Gun Law President William Kirk. Thanks for joining us. Hey, we are going to circle back now on the big assault weapon ban case, sitting on the front steps of the United States Supreme Court. Of course, that is the case of Snoop v. Brown, which as we know is set for conference on December 13th. This is a huge, huge case. I don't think we can really overstate just how important this is. Now, it took the state of Maryland about two and a half months to get their reply in, but it didn't take the plaintiffs long to respond to it. And we got that right here. And I think they've done a really, really good job of pointing out why the Supreme Court needs to take this case and take it right now because there is a lot of crazy and rather nefarious things going on. There's been a complete bastardization of a very clear rule of law and courts are using it to their advantage to advance the cause of civilian disarmament. This is a great brief, I think it really calls everything out. And so today, let's geek you out on it for a little bit and let's talk about how the Supreme Court must stop the insanity by taking this case.
Okay? Hey, listen, before we get going too far down the road, we're going down. Let's remember that this video is being brought to us by the Sonoran Desert Institute. That's right. Get ready to launch your career in the firearms industry today through education. Get ready to start arming yourself today with education, and most importantly, get ready to start defending the inalienable rights of millions of Americans nationwide all through our most powerful act, which is education. Listen, the Sonoran Desert Institute has a program certificate or degree for just about anything that you may desire. So for more information, check them out in the description box below, or easier yet, just visit 'em at sdi.edu. Okay, America, this is what we're talking about. We are talking about for the hundred 34th time now the case of Sno v. Brown. Like I mentioned, it took the state of Maryland about two and a half months to respond to the petition for Sir Ari didn't take the plaintiffs long though to start shooting down some of their arguments.
And I really like what they have done here. First of all, it's brief. You know how much I like brief briefs. But the second thing is that rather than focus on all little tiny issues in this thing, the response brief does a really good job of just saying, Hey, listen Supreme Court, you realize that all your rulings are being bastardized. Do you realize that every rule of law you've ever announced is being completely distorted? Do you realize that all these lower courts and states are just thumbing their nose at you and what are you going to do about it? And what we're going to talk about today is how many of these lower courts hell bent on still upholding civilian disarmament have taken the very simple rule of law that comes from Heller, that is the common use test and completely bastardized it in some ways, just completely thrown it out in favor of their own tests, all in the efforts to uphold civilian disarmament legislation.
And even though every one of these opinions will always cite to Heller and always cite to Bruin, they clearly just do not get the rule of law correctly. Unfortunately, one thing the cited opinions have in common in addition to faithfully following Heller, is their failure to command a majority of the court in question remarkably every circuit to confront the question has somehow held that whatever the test for protected arms should be, it should not be the common use test prescribed by Heller and confirmed by Bruin. To be sure some of these courts relied on the intermediate scrutiny test rejected by Bruin, but many have not. In casting about for some way to sustain bans on common arms, courts have concluded that arms could be banned if they are in the court's estimation, particularly capable of unprecedented lethality ill suited and disproportionate to self-defense or predominantly useful in military service.
All of these rules of laws that were just created by some circuit court out of absolute thin air. And let us remember that at least one court has ruled that the semi-automatic rifle, the most common long gun in circulation in the United States today is not even covered by the Second Amendment. Now the state of Maryland is doing the same thing that all these other states do, which is they're saying to the court, you need to allow this more time to percolate in the lower courts translation. You just need to allow us more time so we can flick our misery and tyranny on the citizens of our state. The plaintiffs are wise to point out that you know what, it's time to stop the insanity. Let's get on with this. Right now, the durability of dispute over how to assess armbands is itself reason enough to grant Ari in this case that the lower courts have not coalesced around a single view on this issue strongly suggests that without this court's intervention, the issue will not be resolved on its own.
That's right. Because these courts are not coalescing around a single issue. It's just like who can come up with the craziest theory today as to why we can uphold this ban? Let us remember that in the fourth circuit already, there was a ruling where, yeah, the second amendment applied, but the interest balancing allowed the court to deem that the law was constitutional because the societal benefits outweighed the individual infringements to the rights. Okay, so you had the fourth circuit ruling that the Second Amendment was in play, but an interest balancing test allowed 'em to uphold the law. When the case came back a second time after Bruin and they couldn't do that interest balancing test, what did they rule that time they ruled the second Amendment didn't even apply. Listen, if you go back and you look at Heller, you realize that there are four very clear rules of law that came out of it.
They used simple English to do that. And for whatever reason, all of these lower courts are unwilling to accept all four rules of law. The rules of law to come from Heller simply were one. There is in general an individual right to keep and bear arms. Two exceptions to that, right, depends on history and tradition of gun regulations. But the historical analysis has already been done for us as it comes to common platforms of firearms because the only historical tradition we have is banning arms, which are both dangerous and unusual. Three, there is no history and tradition of banning arms in common use for lawful purposes. That is true. And handguns cannot be categorically banned precisely because they are uncommon use for lawful purposes, all of which is true. But you see, for whatever reason, the lower courts are just cherry picking a couple of these rules of law because at the end of the day, if they adopted all of 'em, they're going to get to a result that they don't want.
And so the plaintiff's point out following Heller, the courts of appeals have largely accepted and understood the first and the last of these holdings, but it took Bruin for them to finally accept the second granting a review of this case is necessary to make them understand the third Marilyn's brief and opposition, which like the court of appeals refuses to take common use seriously. Amply demonstrates that fact. And remember, one of the big reasons that those who support civilian disarmament want to do away with the common use test is because it's a very simple test. It's a numerical value test, and they really think that there should be a lot more to it, that lot more being the subjective of opinions of those in local state governments. But as the plaintiffs point out here and contrary to Maryland in the fourth circuit's next objection, applying the common use standard does not lead to absurd consequences because the protected status of a type of arm depends on the aggregate commercial choices of the American people and how those choices happen to intersect with the speed of regulation.
That is really important. America, I want you to understand this because if Maryland got its way, it's the courts that are going to decide what's most appropriate for you to defend your life with. Whereas now shockingly, the American people get to make that choice. What would be absurd is permitting Maryland to ban the most popular rifle in America over the consistent instruction from this court for the last 16 years, that the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily take certain policy choices off the table, including specifically banning common firearms. But the biggest problem here is this complete bastardization, this complete distortion of the rulings of Heller by these lower courts hell bent on civilian disarmament. So as the petitioners point out, for example, as we explained in the petition, several courts including the forest circuit below, have distorted heller's discussion of M 16 rifles to suggest that contrary to the text of the amendment itself, arms can be banned because of not despite their utility in the military.
Ultimately, the plaintiff's point out something has gone awry when a court's analysis ends with the conclusion that semiotic matter rifles are not even arms because that is a ruling of one of the circuit courts. But consider all of these other bastardized newer versions of the in common use test that need to all go to the trash bin of history. And the Supreme Court could do that. For example, arguments such as one that arms may be banned because of their utility for military purposes. Two, that arms may be banned if they are excessively dangerous when misused by criminals. Hey, I got news for you. Firearms are excessively dangerous when misused by anybody criminal or otherwise. Three, that arms may be banned if a court is convinced adequate means for self-defense remain available, which the state has not chosen to ban. Yeah, and that is really the most dangerous argument because what the state of Maryland, just like the state of California, just like the state of Illinois and recently the state of Washington's making this argument also is, Hey, listen, we don't care what the American people want to buy to defend their own lives with.
We're the government and we get to determine what's appropriate, and we believe that the arms that you currently have are inappropriate for self-defense. That is literally the position that the state of Maryland takes here, which ultimately leads the petitioners to correctly point out. As these examples demonstrate the efforts by the court of appeals to find a workaround to the common use test are having a substantial distorting effect on the Second Amendment jurisprudence. This court's correction is required to ensure compliance with this court's precedence and the proper development of Second Amendment case law. Listen, a really, really good response brief. We're going to link it up down below so that you guys can all geek out on it for yourself. Remember the case once again is Snoop v Brown. It is set for conference before the Supreme Court Justices on December 13th. If you got any 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.
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Credit: William Kirk, Esq. Washington Gun Law