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Scholarship Highlight: Private Transportation Gun Regulations; Bruen and Pre-Trial Criminal Defendants

Posted by on September 22, 2023

[The scholarship highlighted in this post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law.] Two new pieces of student legal scholarship are now posted examining aspects of the Bruen test.  First, in a note forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, Josh Hochman “survey[s] rules and regulations promulgated by railroad corporations […]

An Update on Range and Challenges to the Felon Prohibitor

Posted by on September 20, 2023

As described in a recent SCOTUS Gun Watch update, the government has sought and received an extension of the deadline to seek certiorari in Range v. Attorney General (the petition, should the government seek certiorari, is now due on October 5).  While it’s not unusual based on past practice for a party to pursue, and […]

Bruen & The Myth of Continuity in American Gun Culture

Posted by on September 18, 2023

This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. Opponents of firearm regulation, energized by the landmark Bruen decision, have been paying closer attention to early America. They like what they don’t see. The ruling makes historical evidence—or, more to the point, the absence of historical evidence—dispositive in […]

Still a Hollow Hope: State Political Power and the Second Amendment – Part II

Posted by on September 15, 2023

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 […]

Still a Hollow Hope: State Political Power and the Second Amendment – Part I

Posted by on September 13, 2023

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 […]

SCOTUS Gun Watch – Week of 9/11/23

Posted by on September 11, 2023

The Court has set oral argument in Rahimi for Tuesday, November 7.  Rahimi is currently the only case set for argument that day, and the Court typically holds oral argument beginning at 10 am Eastern time.  In Guedes, one of three pending petitions involving the ATF’s bump stock ban, the government filed its response on September 5.  The […]

Scholarship Highlight: Guns and Marijuana, Second Amendment Debates, and Intergovernmental Immunity

Posted by on September 8, 2023

The scholarship highlighted in this post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. In a new paper posted to SSRN and forthcoming in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Nicholas Goldrosen examines the connection between marijuana legalization and gun restrictions premised on drug use.  Goldrosen performs an empirical […]

An Eighteenth-Century Gun Culture Shaped by Constraints

Posted by on September 6, 2023

This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. Compared to England, Britain’s thirteen American colonies imposed relatively few legal restrictions on the possession and use of firearms.  However, technological limitations and production methods still placed serious constraints on the use and availability of firearms and created conditions […]

Litigation Highlight: Split Fifth Circuit Panel Renews Injunction Against ATF’s Stabilizing Brace Rule

Posted by on September 1, 2023

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 […]

Was There a “Hearing” on the Protective Order in Rahimi?

Posted by on August 30, 2023

Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in United States v. Rahimi, in which the Fifth Circuit invalidated the federal ban on those subject to certain domestic violence restraining orders (or DVROs) possessing firearms for the duration of the order.  We previously covered the Fifth Circuit’s decision here and here.  On August 14, the […]

SCOTUS Gun Watch – Week of 8/28/23

Posted by on August 28, 2023

In Rahimi, a total of 39 amicus briefs were filed between August 17 and August 22—all but one in support of the government.  The briefs were filed by organizations ranging from a group of state chief judges and justices, to the American Medical Association, to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  We’ll have a […]

The American Bar Association’s Resolution Concerning Guns on College Campuses

Posted by on August 25, 2023

This guest post does not necessarily represent the views of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. Earlier this year, the American Bar Association adopted Resolution 603, a policy resolution about permitting or banning guns on college campuses. Resolution 603 was a proposal from the ABA’s Standing Committee on Gun Violence, which in the past has […]

Litigation Highlight: Fifth Circuit Panel Strikes Down Federal Unlawful User Ban

Posted by on August 23, 2023

On August 9, a unanimous Fifth Circuit panel invalidated the federal ban on unlawful users of controlled substances possessing firearms, as applied to a habitual user of marijuana, in United States v. Daniels.  While a handful of district courts had reached similar conclusions on this provision of federal criminal law—including the February decision in Harrison […]

The Confused Ninth Circuit Decision Striking Down Hawaii’s Butterfly Knife Ban

Posted by on August 21, 2023

In Teter v. Lopez, a Ninth Circuit panel struck down Hawaii’s ban on butterfly knives in an opinion that is hard to understand. The underlying result was presaged in the oral arguments, as this prior post suggests, but the final opinion is still confounding to me. It would not be surprising to see this case […]

The Sounds of Silence: An Examination of Local Legal Records Reveals Robust Historical Regulation of the Public Peace

Posted by and on August 18, 2023

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 […]

Litigation Highlight: Federal Judge Grants Motion to Dismiss Claims Challenging San Jose Gun Insurance and Fee Requirements

Posted by on August 16, 2023

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 […]

SCOTUS Gun Watch – Week of 8/14/23

Posted by on August 14, 2023

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 […]

Gunowner Privacy and the Second Amendment

Posted by on August 11, 2023

[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 […]

“[B]eing Necessary to the Security of a Free State …”: Understanding a Possible Relationship Between the Second Amendment and the Rule of Law

Posted by on August 9, 2023

[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.]  The relationship between the […]

Litigation Highlight: Michigan Appeals Court Upholds University of Michigan’s Campus Gun Ban

Posted by on August 8, 2023

In a post last November, Jake summarized a remand order from the Michigan Supreme Court in Wade v. University of Michigan: a challenge to the university’s ban on campus possession of firearms with certain limited exceptions.  The Michigan Supreme Court sent the case back to the appellate level last fall after Bruen, and Justice David […]

Taking Aim at New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act

Posted by on August 7, 2023

[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 […]

The Gun Industry and the New Anti-Boycott Laws

Posted by on August 4, 2023

[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 […]

Firearms, Defense, and the Common Good

Posted by on August 2, 2023

[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 2021, Professor Adrian […]

SCOTUS Gun Watch – Week of 7/31/23

Posted by on July 31, 2023

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 […]

Founding Fantasies vs. Historical Realities in the Second Amendment Debate

Posted by on July 27, 2023

[This is a guest post that is part of a mini-series on the history of firearms and gun regulation in early America.] The modern debate over the Second Amendment is premised on a perfect storm of historical error. It would be tempting to conclude that historical reality is irrelevant to modern Second Amendment jurisprudence given the trio […]