The Second Amendment preserves the right of the people to keep and bear arms. That has been affirmed in multiple Supreme Court rulings by now, and while I know the anti-gunners disagree with it, they can learn to live with it. One big legal question that’s being discussed in the judicial system is whether that applies to accessories like suppressors.
Suppressors aren’t essential to the proper function of a firearm, but considering why gun rights were preserved by the Founding Fathers, it seems pretty obvious that they should be treated as arms.
Some don’t agree.
Well, the Fifth Circuit apparently does, though with some significant caveats.
A federal appeals court has ruled the Second Amendment covers silencers, but that doesn’t mean the government can’t restrict them.
On Thursday, a three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld Brennan Comeaux’s conviction for possessing unregistered silencers. Comeaux argued silencers are protected by the Second Amendment, and the National Firearms Act’s (NFA) registration requirement is therefore unconstitutional. The panel agreed on the first point, but not the second.
“Though silencers are Second Amendment ‘Arms,’ because Comeaux has not alleged that the NFA’s shall-issue regime has been put toward abusive ends, he has not shown that § 5861(d) burdens his Second Amendment rights,” Judge Jerry E. Smith wrote for the majority in US v. Comeaux. “The judgment of conviction is AFFIRMED.”
The ruling elevates silencers to protected arms, creating a circuit split among federal appeals courts that could draw interest from the Supreme Court. It deals a setback to both the Department of Justice, which has argued the sound-suppressing devices aren’t “arms,” and to gun-rights activists, who’ve argued the NFA’s regulations on them are unconstitutional. It raises the stakes for the rash of silencer litigation across the United States.
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Still, the Comeaux panel was willing to expand on what the Peterson panel held. Instead of assuming without deciding that silencers are protected, Judge Smith definitely decided the issue.
“Peterson left open the question whether silencers are Second Amendment ‘Arms,’” he wrote. “They are.”
He argued the sound-suppressing attachments qualify as “arms” under the definitions the Supreme Court has relied on in its Second Amendment cases, such as New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.
This creates a split between different circuit courts, which means it’s more likely that the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case. Then again, considering how many cases aren’t being heard already on the topic of gun rights, nothing is a slam dunk.
While the ruling isn’t great, defining suppressors as “arms” makes any attempts to ban them, as several states have already done, constitutionally suspect at best, and downright unconstitutional by most readings of things. While anti-gunners like to make suppressors out to be some great evil, the reality is that most of them learned about them from bad Hollywood presentations of them, up to and including slapping one on a revolver, and it being whisper-quiet. They simply don’t know what they don’t know, but they want to legislate it just the same.
And other courts have argued that things like suppressors are accessories, thus not protected by the Second Amendment at all, since they’re not essential to the operation of the weapon. Ammunition? Essential. Not blowing out your eardrums? Nah, it’ll be fine.
This particular ruling runs contrary to that, and my hope is that it’ll be enough for the Supreme Court to wake up and take the case, make the ruling, and maybe, just maybe, end the whole NFA thing.
Unfortunately, this ruling argues that because the NFA is essentially a “shall issue” licensing process, the law itself is fine as there’s an objective standard that applies to everyone equally. It’s very possible that the Supreme Court would do the same, especially when they didn’t dismiss permitting for concealed carry with Bruen, only the “may issue” processes at the heart of the case.
Still, there’s plenty of good news as it stands.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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