Supreme Court Almost Ruled That Stun Guns Are Protected by the Second Amendment
My interest is as a self defense advocate. This could play out a couple ways. If stun guns are in, might ordinary guns then be ruled out? Or shall we see this add on option to those that have a need and hesitate to have a regular gun for good reason? I’m long on record railing at the frequent illegality of less lethal weapons. It’s only fair that we ordinary folks that are sometimes preyed upon have a fighting option of our own reasonable choice.
Details not included abound. Ones legal risks often pale in the face of what can happen in a confrontation. We have seen this go well in recent news stories but we all now how bad it can go.
If it clears up that less lethal yet effective tools like stun guns and full strength pepper spray or perhaps those bean bag impactors will become legal for us ordinary folks it opens up for some discussion of how all that is best done.
The Supreme Court on Monday accepted a Massachusetts woman’s argument that a law criminalizing stun guns may violate the Second Amendment.
In an unsigned, two-page decision, the court threw out the conviction of Jaime Caetano, who had argued that her prosecution for carrying a stun gun in her purse for self-defense purposes violated her constitutional rights.
Quoting its landmark 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller — authored by none other than the late Justice Antonin Scalia — the court said that “the Second Amendment extends … to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”
The court stopped short of saying that stun guns are wholly protected under the Second Amendment. Instead, the justices sent the case back to Massachusetts’ highest court to reconsider its earlier ruling against Caetano. That ruling had declared stun guns to be “dangerous and unusual” and noted that they didn’t exist when the Second Amendment was enacted.
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