Teenagers with handguns! Woo-hoo!

Teenagers with handguns! Woo-hoo!

The bizarre, brain-dead, corporate-adoring, human-hating decisions from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, our most reactionary federal court (yes, even worse than SCOTUS), continue apace.

The latest exercise in egregiousness came on January 30 when this cabal of judicial Death Eaters overturned a district court decision and declared that preventing teenagers from buying handguns is unconstitutional.

The decision upended a nearly 67-year-old federal law, part of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, which banned federally-licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to anyone under 21.

Circuit Judge Edith Jones wrote the limits were "unconstitutional in light of our Nation's historic tradition of firearm regulation" and "the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among 'the people' whose right to keep and bear arms is protected."

Indeed, this latest decision served to emphasize just how deep into history the devotion to "historical" goes, claiming that the DOJ, which defended the ban, provided "scant" evidence of similar limits during "the founding era" and that the government's "19th century evidence 'cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence.'" In other words, we are permanently trapped in the thinking of the 1790s and nothing, no law, practice, or evidence from any time after 1799 can (if you'll pardon the lame pun) pass muster.

It came as the result of suit filed by some 18-20 year-olds with support - that is, money and lawyers - from the "More guns! Guns good!" groups the Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition. And indeed, one of sickest reactions came from Brandon Combs, president of the latter group, who called the ruling a victory against "an immoral and unconstitutional age-based gun ban." It's not just unconstitutional, it's downright immoral to keep 18-20 year-olds from walking around with loaded handguns. And hooray for freedom!*

The ruling was based on, of course, the blood-thirsty 2022 decision of the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which it found - invented, really - the concept that limitations of the Second Amendment could only apply to restrictions that were "consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation," such "historical tradition" apparently meaning the time of the "founding," i.e. the period of the revolution and the adoption of the Constitution - a time when the most common weapons were predominantly muzzle-loading weapons firing single balls.

A few examples of multi-shot or "rapid fire" weapons existed or were proposed but their use was rare and certainly not common until well into 19th century. Note that "rapid fire" here means eight to nine rounds per minute as opposed to two or three; a semi-automatic AR-15 can do 45-60 rpm and a fully automatic one 800-900.

Anyway, the Bruen decision was in turn based on an even earlier one, the notorious District of Columbia v. Heller, which created entirely out of thin air the doctrine that the Second Amendment provided for an individual right to possess guns.** (The previous standard, set out in US v. Miller (1939), was that the reference was to a collective right of self-defense and the right of the states to maintain militias.)

Heller and its follow-on McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), which incorporated the 2nd Amendment (meaning it applied to state and local governments as well as at the federal level), produced numerous lawsuits challenging gun laws on every level. Courts developed a two-step analysis for judgement: First, does the law in question actually involve the Second Amendment and two, what is the public interest involved in the law - in this case limiting gun violence and death - and is that interest significant enough and narrowly-tailored enough to justify the limit on the freedom involved. (Note well: This balancing of rights against the public interest is standard in questions of Constitutional challenges.)

As a result of applying that test, judges upheld nearly every law challenged.

Which wasn't enough for the gun nuts and their collaborators on SCOTUS, so in Bruen, the Court declared, in the words of decision author Clarence Thomas, that analysis took "one step too many." To put that bluntly, when it comes to guns, the public interest is irrelevant along with the difference between a muzzle-loading flintlock and an AR-15 firing 60 rounds a minute from a 100-round drum.

What's more and maybe worse, the Bruen decision also declared, again for the first time and again based on "proof by blatant assertion," an individual right to carry a loaded gun in public - despite the fact that there was no general right to carry arms in public when the Second Amendment was adopted; the idea arose in the antebellum South decades later in significant part to maintain control of slaves.

In fact it is an entirely modern - like 1970s modern - invention of the "guns are good" crowd and so much for the importance of history.

But then again, history was never a strong point for the gun nuts.

And so here we are. Expect this decision to be appealed and do not be the least little tiny bit surprised if it's not both accepted by SCOTUS and ultimately upheld.

Despite -

the facts that the US has the highest firearm homicide rate in the industrialized world, one 18 times the average rate in 35 other developed countries, and saw 30 mass murders*** (about one every twelve days) and 503 mass killings (more than nine per week) in 2024;

the facts we know that more guns equals more crime and that there is a direct relationship between the strength of a state's gun laws and the lowness of its gun crime rate;

the facts that handguns were used in 62% of the nation’s gun murders in 2019 and in 90% of all cases of firearms violence;

and the fact that guns are now the leading cause of death for children;

we are now looking at allowing more teenagers more access to more handguns - while the gun makers and their paid-for legal shills sit in their clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, drinking their wine and toasting their victory for the "freedom" of the grave.

As if the sheer indifference to the suffering of others we already - wait, that’s wrong; it’s not indifference, it would be better if it was; it’s the sheer glee at the suffering of others we already see around us, as if that wasn’t depressing enough.

*Not having read the entire opinion, I'm assuming here that the reference to "eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals" means the decision is limited to the class of which the plaintiffs are part. Otherwise, it means that in the states in the 5th Circuit - Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas - there is now no age limit to buying handguns.

**For some of my own thoughts on Heller, see the What's Left Special Report: Guns, starting about half-way down.

***"Mass murder" is defined as at least four people killed in one incident, not counting the shooter; "mass shooting" as at least four people shot, not necessarily killed, in one incident, again not counting the shooter.