Legal insurrection is more than a very good blog on the Internet. It’s what happens when inferior court judges ignore or subvert the rule of law and/or legal precedent handed down from their superiors. What’s more, it’s happening right now in far too many federal and state courts.
Judges are ignoring the US Supreme Court’s decisions in both Heller from a decade ago and Bruen handed down last summer. Some judges throw out a word salad decision Kamala Harris would be proud of. Others brazenly call Bruen stupid. Well, actually the judge wrote that it was “intellectually flawed” and as such he was ignoring it.
Then there is an Oregon judge who said the Second Amendment only applies to firearms “in common use for self-defense.” Sorry, bub. There’s no “in common use for self-defense” in the Second Amendment. What’s more, there’s no such verbiage in the Heller or Bruen decisions. Yes, there’s “in common use” but it’s followed up with “for lawful purposes, such as self-defense.” All that didn’t stop the insurrectionist jurist from making up his own “in common use for self-defense” verbiage.
Until and unless SCOTUS smacks down these inferior court jurists flouting the rule of law, the Supremes will continue to have a full-blown legal insurrection among the inferior courts. We must follow the rule of law or we’ll have anarchy.
Meanwhile, don’t give up hope and I’ll tell you why: The courts have thrown out more unconstitutional gun control schemes in the last year since SCOTUS handed down Bruen than in the 40 years before this one, combined. Want an example? How about the Fifth Circuit throwing out the prohibition on gun ownership for those who have used drugs.
From the Albany Herald:
(CNN) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down a decades-old law barring users of illegal drugs from possessing firearms – the latest blow to US gun regulations after the Supreme Court cleared the way last year for courts to reexamine the nation’s gun laws under a new legal standard.
In a unanimous judgement from a three-judge panel at the New Orleans-based appeals court, the court said the 1968 law is unconstitutional, citing a landmark 2022 Supreme Court decision that changes the framework that lower courts must use when analyzing gun restrictions.
“In short, our history and tradition may support some limits on an intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon, but it does not justify disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug usage,” Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote for the panel. “Nor do more generalized traditions of disarming dangerous persons support this restriction on nonviolent drug users.”
Even Joe Biden will probably support this to help extricate his reprobate son.