Until yesterday, a federal law prohibited people under felony indictment from buying guns.
But that public safety protection is now gone, thanks to a ruling by an Obama-nominated, Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas (see his bio here).
I’m not sure it’s his fault. In striking down the law as unconstitutional (see story here), he acknowledged his ruling would have “real world consequences,” but indicated his hands were tied by a Supreme Court decision this summer that “framed those concerns solely as a historical analysis.”
Because of that case, he wrote, “the Government must prove that laws regulating conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text align with this Nation’s historical tradition.” Which, he concluded, this law doesn’t.
That’s a crock. We’re not living in the 1780s anymore. And just to show how specious the conservative justices’ reasoning is, if you can even dignify it with that word, there is no historical tradition embedded in the Constitution for owning AR-15s. Historically, the Second Amendment only covered spears, swords, and flintlock muzzle-loading muskets and pistols.
Photo below: By carrying two of these pistols, you got another shot if the first one missed, or there was more than one of ’em. And yes, typical lifespans were shorter then.
