Say, Maybe Stun Guns Are Covered By The Second Amendment After All!

By Bob Owens

In a unanimous decision in the first gun-related case since Justice Antonin Scalia died, the U.S. Supreme Court slapped down (PDF) a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision that asserted there was no constitutional right to own a stun gun.

The Court has held that “the Second Amendment ex- tends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 582 (2008), and that this “Second Amend- ment right is fully applicable to the States,” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 750 (2010). In this case, the Su- preme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massa- chusetts law prohibiting the possession of stun guns after examining “whether a stun gun is the type of weapon contemplated by Congress in 1789 as being protected by the Second Amendment.” 470 Mass. 774, 777, 26 N. E. 3d 688, 691 (2015).

The court offered three explanations to support its holding that the Second Amendment does not extend to stun guns. First, the court explained that stun guns are not protected because they “were not in common use at the time of …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms