Judge Says AR-15s Not Covered Under Second Amendment


The case of Kolbe v O’Malley, stems from the Maryland law that severely restricted the sale and possession of AR and AK rifles. From the decision:

Upon review of all the parties’ evidence, the court seriously doubts that the banned assault long guns are commonly possessed for lawful purposes, particularly self-defense in the home, which is at the core of the Second Amendment right, and is inclined to find the weapons fall outside Second Amendment protection as dangerous and unusual.

First, the court is not persuaded that assault weapons are commonly possessed based on the absolute number of those weapons owned by the public. Even accepting that there are 8.2 million assault weapons in the civilian gun stock, as the plaintiffs claim, assault weapons represent no more than 3% of the current civilian gun stock, and ownership of those weapons is highly concentrated in less than 1% of the U.S. population.

Under this logic if only three percent of the public exercised their right to speak their minds and criticize their government, that would not be covered under the first amendment. Criticizing the government could be seen as dangerous and undermining it and if only a few people engaged in such criticisms it could be found that such speech is not protected.

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