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The decision by U.S. District Judge John Broomes in Wichita on
Wednesday appeared to mark the first time a court has held that
banning machine guns is unconstitutional after the
conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 issued a
landmark ruling that expanded gun rights.
In that ruling, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v.
Bruen, the Supreme Court established a new test for assessing
firearms laws, saying restrictions must be "consistent with this
nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."
The Supreme Court clarified that standard in June as it upheld a
ban on people subject to domestic violence restraining orders
having guns, saying a modern firearms restriction needs only a
"historical analogue," not a "historical twin," to be valid.
Broomes, an appointee of Republican then-President Donald Trump,
said prosecutors in Tamori Morgan's case failed to identify such
a historical analogue to support charging him with violating the
machine gun ban.
The U.S. Department of Justice can appeal the decision, which
the gun safety group Everytown Law in a statement called
"extreme and reckless." Prosecutors did not respond to a request
for comment. Morgan's lawyer declined to comment.
Morgan was indicted last year on charges that he illegally
possessed a machine gun and a machine gun conversion device
known as a "Glock switch."
Congress first moved to limit machine guns through the National
Firearms Act in 1934, which was enacted after the weapons became
commonly used by criminals during the Prohibition Era. In 1986,
it went further and barred possessing machine guns that were not
lawfully possessed prior to that year.
Prosecutors said the weapons at issue in Morgan's case did not
fall within the protections of the U.S. Constitution's Second
Amendment, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms for
self-defense.
But Broomes disagreed, saying the "the machinegun and Glock
switch are bearable arms within the plain text of the Second
Amendment."
While prosecutors pointed to laws from the 1700s and 1800s
barring the use of "dangerous or unusual weapons," Broomes said
those historical examples focused on their use to terrorize the
public, not simply possessing them in the first place.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia
Garamfalvi and Jonathan Oatis)
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