“Good for both home and battle, the AR-15 is the kind of versatile gun that lies at the intersection of the kinds of firearms protected under District of Columbia v. Heller,” U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez wrote last year in an early decision for a still-pending challenge to California’s gun restrictions. The final decision will need to reflect this year’s U.S. Supreme Court guidance in Bruen that “when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct, and to justify a firearm regulation the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
So, President Biden’s bold goal of making “semiautomatic weapons” unavailable is probably well beyond his grasp without serious changes to the Constitution.
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