Search for: "Stephen Halbrook"
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15 Jun 2009, 12:00 am
, 54 South Dakota Law Review 233-252 (2009).Stephen P. [read post]
25 Jul 2023, 6:56 pm
[Plaintiffs’ experts are biased, but defendants’ are neutral.] On July 14, the U.S. District Court for Oregon issued a 122-page opinion, styled Oregon Firearms Federation v. Kotek Oregon Alliance for Gun Safety, upholding Oregon's ban on magazines holding over ten rounds. Its author is Judge Karin J. Immergut. While the reasoning in the opinion is similar to like decisions by some other district courts, what I found remarkable was the disparate treatment of the expert… [read post]
6 Jun 2023, 7:18 pm
[California is appealing the injunction against its “Not Unsafe” Handgun Act.] California's Unsafe Handgun Act effectively bans the sale of almost all semiautomatic pistols that were designed beginning in 2007, and all such pistols introduced in 2013 and thereafter. As explained in a previous post, in March, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney of the Central District of California issued a preliminary injunction in Boland v. Bonta against enforcement the law. The Ninth… [read post]
9 Jun 2025, 6:53 pm
[“The AR–15 is the most popular rifle in the country.”] On June 5, in an unanimous decision by Justice Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court ruled in Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos that Mexico failed plausibly to plead that the American firearm industry aided and abetted unlawful sales routing guns to Mexican drug cartels. The decision not only adds teeth to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), it also recognizes that semiautomatic… [read post]
14 May 2025, 5:18 pm
[It’s déjà vu all over again.] On May 8, in its 7-2 decision by Justice Charles Johnson in State v. Gator's Custom Guns, the Washington Supreme Court upheld the state ban on the import and sale of magazines that hold over ten rounds. Last year I posted "Injunction Against Washington Magazine Ban Stayed Within Minutes," explaining how Superior Court Gary B. Bashor's 55-page preliminary injunction against the ban was stayed just 49 minutes after the state… [read post]
20 May 2024, 8:05 pm
[The Ninth Circuit invalidates the felon gun ban for non-violent offenses with no Founding-era analogues.] The Ninth Circuit, in U.S. v. Duarte, has joined the Third Circuit's Range decision in holding the Gun Control Act's ban on firearm possession by felons (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)) in violation of the Second Amendment as applied to convictions for non-violent offenses that have no Founding-era analogues. Prof. Volokh summarized the decision when it was released on May 9. … [read post]
19 Apr 2024, 6:52 pm
[Agency pushes the envelope to require gun dealer licenses beyond the statute.] ATF's Final Rule Definition of "Engaged in the Business" as a Dealer in Firearms amounts to 466 pages of responses to comments and the final rule itself. Over 252,000 of the 258,000 comments or 98% in favor of the proposed rule were form letters with identical text found online and recommended by (anti-gun) organizations. Only 5,140 were not form letters. Of the 99,000 comments opposed… [read post]
28 Feb 2024, 10:00 pm
[The continuous, manual forward pressure on the handguard precludes “automatic” function.] On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Garland v. Cargill, which poses the issue of whether a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock is a machine gun. A machine gun is defined as "any weapon which shoots … automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger." 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b). If a gun fires… [read post]
21 Dec 2025, 6:41 pm
[The Virgin Islands government didn’t get the memo that Bruen was decided.] On December 16, Harmeet Dhillon's Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice filed the complaint in U.S. v. Government of Virgin Islands in the District Court of the Virgin Islands. The lawsuit was filed "to restore the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens" under 34 U.S.C. § 12601, which authorizes the Attorney General to sue a governmental authority engaging in a pattern or… [read post]
20 Jan 2026, 6:49 pm
[If a place is truly “sensitive,” the state must provide armed security.] Before the Supreme Court heard oral argument yesterday in Wolford v. Lopez, I covered a range of Second Amendment issues central and tangential to the dispute over Hawaii's no-carry default rule. In opposition to the Court's Bruen decision, Hawaii enacted a "Vampire Rule" requiring prior consent for a licensed armed person to enter private property open to the public. Think stopping at a… [read post]
13 Jan 2025, 6:47 pm
On December 23, the Third Circuit en banc handed Bryan Range an early Christmas present by ruling that despite his decades-old conviction for a false statement to obtain food stamps in violation of Pennsylvania law, he "remains among 'the people' protected by the Second Amendment." Further, "the Government did not carry its burden of showing that the principles underlying our Nation's history and tradition of firearm regulation support disarming… [read post]
11 Sep 2023, 6:16 pm
[Merrick Garland proposes ever-more intrusive ATF regulations.] Attorney General Merick Garland is proposing new ATF regulations that would expand definitions in the Gun Control Act to require ever-more gun owners to obtain federal dealer licenses. This follows a new regulation redefining "frame or receiver" and another one reclassifying pistols with braces as "short-barreled rifles." As I've posted previously, those regulations have run smack into the Fifth… [read post]
24 Aug 2023, 7:04 pm
[The Government drops reference to the slave codes as a historical analogue in Rahimi.] "The Government … points to laws in several colonies and states that disarmed classes of people considered to be dangerous, specifically including … slaves," noted the Fifth Circuit in U.S. v. Rahimi. Applying the Supreme Court's test in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, the court found the federal ban on gun possession by a person with a domestic violence… [read post]
8 Aug 2023, 8:11 pm
Judge Stephen A. Higginson dissented from the Mock decision. [read post]
2 Jun 2025, 6:50 pm
[Justice Kavanaugh: “this Court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon.”] After fifteen re-listings, on June 2 the Supreme Court denied cert in Snope v. Brown, which concerns Maryland's ban on semiautomatic rifles, and Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island, which concerns Rhode Island's magazine ban. I previously discussed these cases here. Cert denial in Ocean State was more predictable, even though Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have… [read post]
13 Jan 2026, 6:21 pm
[Its Amici in Wolford v. Lopez abandon the embarrassing “analogue.”] On Tuesday, January 20, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Wolford v. Lopez, which concerns whether the Ninth Circuit erred in holding that Hawaii may prohibit the carrying of handguns by permit holders on private property open to the public unless the property owner affirmatively gives express permission. The Ninth Circuit upheld the ban under Bruen based on the existence of merely two purported… [read post]
11 Jun 2023, 7:22 pm
[Range would be the best § 922(g) case for the Supreme Court to resolve.] Last week the Third Circuit en banc decided Range v. Attorney General, holding that a person convicted of a Pennsylvania fraud offense – a misdemeanor punishable by up to five years' imprisonment—remains among "the people" protected by the Second Amendment, and that the government failed to show that our history and tradition of firearm regulation supported disarming him. Authored by… [read post]
15 Mar 2023, 5:01 am
The Fifth Circuit's decision in United States v. Rahimi, which held that the federal statute prohibiting possession of a firearm by a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order violates the Second Amendment, has managed to stay in the news for longer than most circuit court decisions. On March 2, a month after it initially released its decision, the Fifth Circuit panel withdraw its original opinion and substituted a revised version. The end result is the same, and the updates to… [read post]
29 Sep 2024, 3:41 pm
On October 8, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Garland v. VanDerStok, a challenge to the Final Rule of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) from 2022 redefining and drastically expanding the meaning of the terms "firearm" and "firearm frame or receiver." This is the first of several posts in which I'd like to highlight some of the enlightening amici curiae briefs that have been filed in support of the respondents who… [read post]
25 Aug 2024, 6:42 pm
[ATF shoots the side of a barn, draws a target around the bullet holes, and proclaims “bullseye!” ] The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has decided that ATF's Final Rule determining that most pistols with stabilizing braces are short-barreled rifles is arbitrary and capricious. The case is Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, Inc. v. Garland ("FRAC"), decided on August 9 and authored by Judge Steven Grasz. The decision is filled with… [read post]
