CAN THE GOVERNMENT BAN ‘ASSAULT WEAPONS’? CONSTITUTIONAL EXPERTS WEIGH IN
” This article is part of a series on Guns in America that explores the use of firearms in our country and the debate over gun control.
Since the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, one of the major responses has been to increase restrictions on gun rights, presumably to reduce the probability that a mass shooting will take place.
But what if their proposed methods for doing so are unconstitutional? That’s the argument advanced by some experts on constitutional law, who argue that the landmark cases of District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago protect against the most controversial ideas being proposed, such as an assault weapons ban. Moreover, even some renowned liberal experts on the same law law admit that the tools available to the government are limited.
Key questions in the debate are: Can the government ban assault weapons without violating the Constitution? If so, why? To answer these questions, TheBlaze spoke to legal authorities on both sides of the ideological divide, including some truly famous names within the realm of constitutional law. What we found may surprise you.
A Teaser To Pique Your Interest …
” On these grounds, at least one expert would toss out assault weapons bans entirely. That expert, Randy Barnett of Georgetown Law Center, explained his reasoning to theBlaze via phone:
“When you get down to specifics, I think some of the easier cases for finding unconstitutionality is the assault weapons ban, which bans a weapon in common use, which is the phrase that Heller used to describe the weapons that are protected by the Second Amendment,” Barnett told TheBlaze. “There’s hardly a weapon that’s in more common use than the AR-15 so-called assault weapon. I say so-called, because we all know this is a made-up category. They don’t fire any faster than a constitutionally protected handgun fires, and it’s typically less lethal than a handgun.” “
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