The Court isn’t set to issue an orders list this morning; rather, the final list of the calendar year will come next Monday, December 11. The major case to watch from a Second Amendment perspective is Range, which was mentioned at the Rahimi oral argument and is clearly on the minds of some justices. On November […]
This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. In the past year, federal district courts across America have seen Bruen-fueled challenges to all manner of gun regulation. Whether the topic is a firearm insurance mandate, an administrative rule reclassifying certain pistols as rifles, or restrictions on carrying […]
The amicus briefs filed in support of Rahimi at the Supreme Court include a wide variety of arguments against the constitutionality of the federal domestic violence restraining order ban in 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8)—some of which received substantial airtime during the oral argument earlier this month, and some of which did not. While many amici […]
The Court released an orders list this morning but there is no order yet in Range, which was considered at last Friday’s conference. The response in United States v. Daniels – an as-applied Second Amendment challenge to the federal ban on gun possession for unlawful users of controlled substances by a regular marijuana user – is […]
It was an especially busy day at the Supreme Court on Friday for gun-related cases. The Court granted certiorari in both Vullo (a First Amendment challenge to state business guidance urging certain corporations to consider the reputational risks of doing business with gun-rights organizations) and Cargill (which presents the question of whether ATF’s regulation of bump […]
[This post previously ran as a guest post on the Balkanization blog here.] Since 1994, persons subjected by courts to qualifying domestic violence restraining orders have been prohibited from possessing a firearm under 18 U.S.C. § 922 (g)(8). In United States v. Rahimi, the Fifth Circuit declared that prohibition unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. On […]
This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. On September 7, the California legislature passed AB 28, which creates an 11% state excise tax on all guns, ammunition, and gun parts sold by licensed gun dealers in the state. (An excise tax is like a sales tax […]
On October 2, District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas granted a motion for preliminary injunction in Mock v. Garland. Judge O’Connor’s decision enjoined an ATF rule that subjects stabilizing braces to heightened regulation, including a registration requirement, under the National Firearms Act (NFA) by categorizing them as “short-barreled rifles,” or SBRs. […]
[The scholarship highlighted in this post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law.] In a new article forthcoming in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Center co-director Darrell Miller evaluates gun rights under a theory of common good constitutionalism and concludes that “common good constitutionalism does provide […]
As the manager of the Repository of Historical Gun Laws at the Duke Center for Firearms Law, I spend a great deal of my time searching for and reviewing historical firearm regulations. Occasionally, during this research, I serendipitously come across unusual, intriguing, or enlightening laws. This post is the first in what will be an […]
As the November 7 oral argument in Rahimi approaches, the respondent’s brief is due on Wednesday, September 27. Any amicus briefs in support of the respondent are due one week later, on October 4. The Center for Prosecution Integrity filed a brief in support of the respondent ahead of schedule, on September 22. The Supreme […]
This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. In my last post, summarizing the findings of Still a Hollow Hope, I detailed how, due to constraints including the limited nature of constitutional rights, a lack of judicial independence, and the judiciary’s lack of power to implement its […]
This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. As the author of Still a Hollow Hope: State Political Power and the Second Amendment, I have been given the privilege of blogging on this site. For my first couple of posts, I will give a bit of my […]
This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. On August 1, a split Fifth Circuit panel issued a decision in Mock v. Garland that breathed new life into an emergency injunction previously granted against ATF’s recent rule on stabilizing pistol braces. (I previously blogged about the early […]
This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. Many legal scholars and most courts implementing Bruen’s framework have approached early American law as if the statutory record constitutes the sum total of the founding era’s legal traditions. Given that presumption, silences in the statutes become evidence of […]
In August 2022, shortly after Bruen was decided, Judge Beth Labson Freeman of the Northern District of California denied a motion for a preliminary injunction of a San Jose ordinance that requires gun owners to maintain firearm liability insurance and pay an annual gun harm reduction fee. Jake covered that decision here, including how the […]
The major development last week at the Supreme Court was the Court’s text order on August 8 granting the government’s emergency docket application for a stay in Garland v. Vanderstok. A district court judge had entered judgment striking down ATF’s rule classifying certain gun component parts as “firearms” under the GCA on administrative law grounds […]
[This is a guest post based on a paper that was presented at the 2023 Firearms Law Works-In-Progress Workshop. The Workshop is held each year on a home-and-away basis with the University of Wyoming Firearms Research Center. This post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law.] In dueling cases in state and federal […]
[This is a guest post based on a paper that was presented at the 2023 Firearms Law Works-In-Progress Workshop. The Workshop is held each year on a home-and-away basis with the University of Wyoming Firearms Research Center. This post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law.] Since its enactment in […]
[This is a guest post based on a paper that was presented at the 2023 Firearms Law Works-In-Progress Workshop. The Workshop is held each year on a home-and-away basis with the University of Wyoming Firearms Research Center. This post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law.] It was a great […]
There’s no update yet on the oral argument date in Rahimi, although I suspect that information may be coming within the next few weeks. On July 27, the government made an emergency application to the Court in Garland v. Vanderstok. Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas issued an order in the case on […]
[This is a guest post that is part of a mini-series on the history of firearms and gun regulation in early America.] When reconstructing the legal order of the early republic, the inclination is to start where we are now and then move backward along a straight line. Because statutes and appellate decisions at the […]
The Sixth Circuit recently cleared the way for a district court case that will address the complicated interplay of gun displays, online speech, and qualified immunity. On January 20, 2021, the Grand Traverse County (Michigan) Board of Commissioners held a public meeting over Zoom where the Commissioners, including Ron Clous, were visible on video. During […]
In a new article that is forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Brandon Beck seeks “to create a holistic framework for thinking about the modern federal approach to firearms by situating it, historically and conceptually, as a fundamentally distinct era within the larger story of federal firearms criminalization.” Beck separates the […]
This is Part Two in a two-part series on the history of North Carolina’s 1879 concealed carry law. Part One summarized the historical context and legislative record surrounding the law. Part Two will address how the law was enforced in one North Carolina county in the decades after it was enacted. Enforcement of the 1879 […]
