By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
A federal judge in Kansas has dismissed charges of machine gun possession by a Kansas man, noting in his 10-page ruling, “Suffice it to say that the weapons at issue in this case are bearable arms that, under Bruen’s first step, are covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment.”
The ruling, by U.S. District Court Judge John W. Broomes, a Donald Trump appointee, has done more than simply raise eyebrows.
The case involves a man named Tamori Morgan, who had been charged with possession of two fully-automatic weapons, a converted AM-15 chambered for the .300 Blackout cartridge, and a conversion device for certain Glock pistols which converts them to full-auto fire. The device is known as the “Glock switch.”
But Judge Broomes notes in his ruling, “Machineguns have been in existence for well over a century. While the federal government has regulated transfer and possession of such weapons since passage of the National Firearms Act in 1934, it did not outright prohibit possession of machineguns until passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act in 1986. Even then, the law did not prohibit the possession of all machineguns; rather, § 922(o) merely prohibits possession of machineguns that were not lawfully possessed as of the date that prohibition went into effect in 1986. § 922(o)(2)(B). Thus, even today, it is perfectly legal for a person who has not been divested of his firearm rights under some other provision of law to acquire and possess a machinegun, so long as it was lawfully possessed by someone before the relevant date in 1986, and so long as he complies with the National Firearms Act’s requirements to obtain and possess the weapon. In that sense, machineguns are not unusual. The government fails to address these facts, and thus fails to meet its burden to demonstrate that possession of the types of weapons at issue in this case are lawfully prohibited under the Second Amendment.”
In the end, he concludes, “Importantly, this decision says little about what the government might prove in some future case. Rather, under Bruen’s framework for evaluating Second Amendment challenges, it is the government’s burden to identify a historical analog to the restrictions challenged in this case. This the government has failed to do. The court expresses no opinion as to whether the government could, in some other case, meet its burden to show a historically analogous restriction that would justify § 922(o).”
According to Reuters, which posted a link to the Broomes decision, the government can appeal. Reuters noted that Everytown Law, part of the Everytown for Gun Safety gun prohibition lobbying group supported by billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has called the ruling “extreme and reckless.”
Newsweek reported that if Broomes’ decision is upheld on appeal, it could have “far-reaching implications for the regulation of machine guns, including homemade automatic weapons that law enforcement and prosecutors say are driving increased gun violence.”
But is that accurate? According to FBI annual crime data, rifles of any kind—presumably to include fully-automatic weapons—are used in a fraction of all homicides in the U.S. in any given year.
Perhaps the most amusing detail of this case is how virtually every “mainstream” media outlet, including the Associated Press, identified one of Morgan’s guns as a “.300-caliber machine gun.” The firearm is chambered for a cartridge known as the .300 Blackout, with is a .30-caliber cartridge whose parent case is the .223 Remington, trimmed and expanded to handle a .30-caliber projectile.
