(1600 words)
There are two cases that have been kicking around for nearly a decade now. They have been to the Supreme Court, granted certiorari, had the inferior court’s opinion vacated, and then remanded down to the inferior court “in light of the opinion in Bruen”

One is Duncan v. Becerra. This is part of the games people play when they know they are losing. In short: the District court found for The People. The Ninth shit on The People. The Supreme Court said to the Ninth, “You got it wrong, morons, do it over, right.”. The Ninth sent it back to the district “in light of Bruen” with “It was done wrong, do it over.” The district found for The People again. The Ninth decided that a merits panel might find for The People, which they would not allow. So they took the case en banc and have yet to hear oral arguments.

The other is Bianchi v. Frosh which is now Bianchi v. Brown because it has been going on so long, the AG of Maryland has changed.

The United States operates under the concept of “Common Law”.

The dictionary definition doesn’t help much. The key in common law is the use of precedent. Under common law, judges should use the decisions of previous courts to make current decisions. This leads to everybody being treated equally under the law, theoretically.

By the arrangement of superior courts and inferior courts, when inferior courts decide the same question differently, the superior court examines the split and issues an opinion setting precedent, saying how all the inferior courts should answer this (type) of question moving forward.

A superior court’s precedent setting opinion is called “case law”.

When a superior court issues an opinion, they prefer to follow their own precedent. Thus, we have Heller and Bruen referring back to Miller. They said that Miller got it right, that the current opinions are just clarifications or expansions of Miller.

Even though they said to the inferior courts, “You got it wrong, do it right moving forward,” they did not change their past opinion. This process is called stare decises which means “to stand by things decided.”

This was a big question for the Conservative nominees to the Supreme court. This was polite speak for “Are you going to overturn Row v. Wade?”

Occasionally, a court looks at the question and says, “We got it wrong, we have to fix it.”, This was done in Dobbs v. Jackson and Dred Scott v. Sandford.

What this means, to us, is that when there is a conflict between current case law and previous case law, current case law is the correct case law to use.

Nobody would argue that the 18th Amendment is binding today. They would be laughed out of court.

Note the date, 2008. Leaving aside the question of what makes a weapon most useful in military service, it is clear that this case law was issued in 2008.

This was issued in 2022. This case law takes precedence over any other opinion issued before it.

Of course, the state cannot be trusted, we have to look at the context of their citation:

Isn’t interesting how the state left out that all important word “if”? That seems to be because they are hiding what the Supreme Court was actually saying.

Backing up to the previous paragraph, we can see what the cited clause is actually saying: We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weap­ons.”—id. at 627. The “most useful in military service” is actually a reference to “dangerous and unusual weapons.” And we know from Heller that weapons in common use cannot be unusual and can NOT be banned.

We know from Caetano that the absolute number required to be “in common use” is no higher than 200,000.

Do you smell that? It is the state’s pants burning up. The AG’s pants are on fire.

Does the plain text of the Second Amendment cover the individual’s conduct? Then the conduct is presumptively protected. It is then the state’s burden to demonstrate that the modern regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

There is nothing in the holding of Bruen that allows the courts to skip answering the question? Does the plain text of the Second Amendment cover the individual’s conduct?

The plain text does not create categories of arms, some covered, some not. The plain text does not talk about lawful use. The plain text does not discuss self-defense, nor does it have implications of unusually dangerous or even unusual.

Is it an arm? Is the individual a member of The People? Does the individual wish to possess/acquire the arm or does the individual wish to carry the arm?

Three yeses and the plain text covers the conduct of the individual.

Besides the spurious argument that “most useful for military service” allows an outright ban, the state argues that it isn’t time for the Court to consider these cases.

Why?

Well, it’s been less than two years since Bruen issued. A right delayed is a right denied. It should be the state’s position that challenges on constitutional issues be addressed as fast as possible.

Harriet Scott, the wife of Dred Scott, was part of the initial suit, started in 1846, which was decided by the Supreme Court in 1857, 11 years. Because of Chief Justice Taney’s horrible opinion, they spent 11 years more in slavery. They were freed in 1857 by the Blow family, which purchased the pair.

Dred lived for a year as a free man. His wife died in 1876.

I would rather not wait 8 more years in order for the state to be found to have kept citizens of my great country as surfs.