Court Ruling Prepares Groundwork For Gun Confiscation

The quest to confiscate guns just took a big step forward.

On Monday, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that New York’s so-called SAFE Act, a massively restrictive gun control regime that forcibly removes guns from families, met with the dictates of the Constitution.

A three-judge panel ruled on the act, which was passed just 24 hours after being proposed, and which bans possession of any magazine holding more than ten rounds; requires ammo dealers to do background checks on buyers; registers all assault weapons, including retroactive registration; bans more weapons under the definition “assault weapons”; requires handgun permit holders or owners of assault weapons to be renewed every five years; and confiscates weapons after the death of the owners. After the passage of the act, the New York Police Department demanded that all shotguns or rifles holding more than five rounds be “surrendered” to the police or “permanently removed from the City of New York.”

How does all of this comport with the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms? It doesn’t. But the Second Circuit thinks differently: “We conclude that the core challenged prohibitions of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines do not violate the Second Amendment.” After acknowledging that Americans commonly own “assault weapons” and do so for lawful purposes, the Court rejected the right to own them anyway:

[C]itizens may continue to arm themselves with non-semiautomatic weapons or with any semiautomatic gun that does not contain any of the enumerated military-style features. Similarly, while citizens may not acquire high-capacity magazines, they can purchase any number of magazines with a capacity of ten or fewer rounds. In sum, numerous “alternatives remain for law-abiding citizens to acquire a firearm for self-defense.”

Because the government, says the Court, has a “substantial, indeed compelling, governmental interest[] in public safety and crime prevention,” the Court says that these gun bans meet the required Constitutional standard.

This reasoning makes little sense – Heller greenlit personal handgun ownership, and handguns are used in vastly more crimes than so-called “assault weapons.” The Court attempts, idiotically, to argue that “assault weapons” are “disproportionately used to kill law enforcement officers,” then notes that 20 percent of officers killed in the line of duty are killed with such weapons – leaving 80 percent killed by weapons like the Constitutionally-protected handguns. There is simply no rational basis for banning “assault weapons” while leaving handguns untouched, other than incrementalism. The Court also acknowledges that the statutes may not stop mass shootings, but dismisses that complaint anyway.

The Court did not acknowledge a right to grandfathered weaponry – once a weapon is banned, presumably the state can seize it, as the NYPD has attempted to do. On a national level, were the Second Circuit’s logic to be accepted, virtually all “assault weapons” could be seized. And once leftists get one more justice on the Supreme Court and overrule Heller, a full-scale national gun confiscation effort could be on the table were Democrats ever to take Congress.