AWA over at GunfreeZone worries that the anti-gun folks will start using the gun laws of the old west to bolster their attacks on Bruen. The theory that some towns in the old West prohibited residents from having guns to attack the 2A is not a new claim. Gun controllers were using that same stupid argument during the gun control arguments of the 1990’s. That is a large part of New York’s line of argument in the Bruen case.

SCOTUS already addressed this issue:

Finally, respondents point to the slight uptick in gun regulation during the late-19th century. As the Court suggested in Heller, however, late-19th-century evidence cannot provide much insight into
the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence. In addition, the vast majority of the statutes that respondents invoke come from the Western Territories. The bare existence of these localized restrictions cannot overcome the overwhelming evidence of an otherwise enduring American tradition permitting public carry. See Heller, 554 U. S., at 614. Moreover, these territorial laws were rarely subject to judicial scrutiny, and absent any evidence explaining why these unprecedented prohibitions on all public carry were understood to comport with the Second Amendment, they do little to inform “the origins and continuing significance of the Amendment.” Ibid.; see
also The Federalist No. 37, p. 229. Finally, these territorial restrictions deserve little weight because they were, consistent with the transitory nature of territorial government, short lived. Some were held unconstitutional shortly after passage, and others did not survive a Territory’s admission to the Union as a State. Pp. 58–62.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen (06/23/2022)

Categories: Antigun

3 Comments

igor · January 9, 2023 at 8:29 pm

Please don’t try to use logic on the Woke Libtards, their poor widdle brains may explode.

Facts Don't Matter · January 9, 2023 at 10:17 pm

No Fundamental Transformation into West South Africa will be complete until the guns are gone

AWA · January 10, 2023 at 11:45 am

Thank you for the link back. I’m having a difficult time articulating what I intend to communicate.

I recognize that SCOTUS has said that laws from the wild west are outliers and cannot be used to justify infringements.

I also recognize that in 2008 SCOTUS said that 2A cases should be decided on “Does it implicate the 2A?” and “Is it in the text, history and tradition of gun control as of the ratification of the 2A?”

And from 2008 until 2022 the inferior courts twisted this into a means-end two step shuffle that allowed them to rule infringements as constitutional.

My concern is that the infringers are going to attempt to invert the burden of proof from the government trying to show history and tradition to the 2A people having to prove there isn’t history and tradition.

If you are attempting to prove a negative, then all it takes is one example to disprove your attempt. I can easily see the inferior courts inverting the burden of proof and then excepting outliers as evidence that there was something out there.

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