Federal Judge KO���s Several Gun Control Laws at Once
In rendering a recent decision, Ramona Manglona, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, did something we see far too seldom from federal judges presiding over cases that pertain to the Second Amendment: she deferred to logic and common sense.
At issue is a September 28 ruling that went very much to the favor of plaintiff Paul Murphy, a former U.S. Army Ranger. Murphy, like so many other Americans, found himself unable to reasonably exercise his rights to both keep and bear arms simply because of the particular jurisdiction in which he was living, but Manglona made it clear in this case that while there can be restrictions placed on the exercise of Second Amendment rights, those restrictions cannot be tantamount to wiping away those rights. As Judge Manglona put it, ���The individual right to armed self-defense in case of confrontation...cannot be regulated into oblivion,��� and further stated that although ���the right of armed self-defense, including in public, is subject to traditional limitations, it is not subject to elimination.���
Reason.com reports that Manglona, in one fell swoop, knocked out a Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands��� ban on handgun carry in public, an ���assault weapons��� ban, some caliber restrictions, a ridiculous $1,000 tax on handguns, and, also, a requirement that all citizens��� guns be registered with the government.
Bam!
Gun rights advocates have long been unclear as to why it is that so many restrictions on the Second Amendment have been allowed by the U.S. court system to stand, restrictions that, in some parts of the country, are so numerous and so constraining that they, for all intents and purposes, act to nullify the right to keep and bear arms altogether.
As for the restrictions on the carrying of handguns in public, Manglona said the existing law ���completely destroys that right. It is unconstitutional regardless of the level of scrutiny applied, and the Court must strike it down.���
Explaining her decision to throw out the ���assault weapons��� ban, Manglona writes, ���The Commonwealth has not shown through any evidence that its means fit its end. In fact, the evidence suggests that the banned attachments actually tend to make rifles easier to control and more accurate���making them safer to use. Because the Commonwealth's ban does not match its legitimate and important interest, the ban fails intermediate scrutiny and will be struck down.���
Manglona tossed out the aforementioned other three gun laws of CNMI on precisely-different, but thematically-similar grounds: they impede the reasonable exercise of the Second Amendment. That said, I have to share with you what, exactly, she said about the $1,000 tax, because it���s just so wonderful:
���The power to tax is not just the power to fund the government; it is the power to destroy. M���Culloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 327 (1819). And what the Commonwealth cannot do by ban or regulation, it cannot do by taxation. See Minneapolis Star and Tribune, 460 U.S. at 585. Here, the Commonwealth���s law would come close to destroying the right to keep and bear a handgun for self-defense���particularly for the most vulnerable members of society. See Moore, 702 F.3d at 937 (the need for self-defense is most acute in rough neighborhoods). The government need not arm the poor, but it cannot impose uncommon burdens on their ability to exercise their fundamental constitutional rights. Because SAFE���s excise tax comes close to destroying the Second Amendment right to acquire ���the quintessential self-defense weapon,��� Heller I, 554 U.S. at 629, the Court will strike it down.���
Bam!
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
