Judge Issues Shock Machine Gun Ruling

A federal judge recognized a 22-year-old Kansans Second Amendment right to own machine guns last week. 

U.S. District Judge John Broomes ruling is the latest in a series of contradictory interpretations of gun rights stemming from the Supreme Courts sweeping reinterpretation of the Second Amendment in the 2022 case of New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen . 

That decision, penned by Justice Clarence Thomas, said laws restricting gun rights are only constitutional if they stem from a tradition of regulation dating from some time between the signing of the Bill of Rights in 1791 and the end of the Civil War. 

The defendant in the Broomes case, Tamori Morgan, was charged by a federal grand jury last year with possession of a .30-caliber, fully automatic rifle, along with a Glock pistol affixed with a conversion device that allowed it to shoot automatically.  

Federal law prohibits the possession of machine guns produced after 1986 and requires the registration and special taxation of civilian-owned machine guns produced before that year. Under federal law, possessing a machine gun conversion device is the same as possessing a machine gun whether or not the device is attached to a gun. Violating the machine gun ban is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. 

Broomes, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, found that the government failed to identify a historical analog that could be used to justify the blanket prohibition on machine gun possession that Congress passed in 1986. 

Prosecutors noted that the landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which extended Second Amendment rights to individuals rather than just militias, specifically did not aim to undermine longstanding restrictions on dangerous or unusual weapons, including machine guns.

Broomes brushed that contention aside, arguing that Heller only mentioned machine guns in passing and centered on handguns. Broomes ruling noted that Americans own some 740,000 legally registered machine guns, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. 

Broomes dismissed the governments charges against Morgan. 

The ruling applies specifically to Morgans case but opens the door to further constitutional challenges of machine gun restrictions. 

The U.S. Attorneys Office for Kansas declined to say whether prosecutors would appeal the decision. The government is likely to appeal, however. 

The case is sure to attract the attention of federal authorities, who are struggling to contain the flood of 3D-printed machine gun conversion devices . 

Public defenders have routinely used the Bruen decision in Hail Mary attempts to get sure-loser cases dismissed on constitutional grounds. They have reflexively cited it in machine gun cases, but have not appeared to win in those cases until now.

But citing Bruen to dismiss otherwise unwinnable criminal gun cases has resulted in rulings that have poked holes in or completely overturned other major gun control laws, casting doubt on the constitutionality of long-accepted firearm restrictions, like the federal law barring people with felony convictions from possessing guns . 

The most famous of those challenges, United States v. Rahimi, went all the way to the Supreme Court this year after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a law barring domestic abusers from possessing firearms. The defendant, Zackey Rahimi, fell under a civil protective order after allegedly threatening the mother of his child with a firearm. 

Police suspect that Rahimi shot guns in public in at least six separate instances while under the protective order , including four instances in which he shot at specific people but missed. 

In a lopsided 8-1 vote in June, the Supreme Court upheld the 1994 law stripping the gun rights of those subject to protective orders for domestic abuse. Only Judge Thomas, the author of the Bruen ruling, contended that the law should be overturned on constitutional grounds. 

Reformers widely viewed the Rahimi ruling as an indication that Thomas expansive interpretation of Second Amendment rights has fallen flat  with the rest of the courts conservative majority.

Correction: This article has been updated to note the Supreme Court vote in June that upheld the 1994 law stripping the gun rights of those subject to protective orders for domestic abuse was 8-1, not 7-1.