The head law enforcement officers of several conservative states have ramped up their support for the Second Amendment by petitioning the Supreme Court of the United States to take up critical cases dealing with the right to keep and bear arms.
We recently reported how attorneys general from 25 states had petitioned SCOTUS to consider a case challenging Massachusetts’ restrictive licensing requirements for nonresidents. More recently, AGs from 27 states have asked the Supreme Court to hear and overrule Washington state’s punitive ban on firearms magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
The 27-state coalition, led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, believes the Washington State Supreme Court got it wrong when it ruled the magazine capacity law as constitutional.
“The Supreme Court needs to step in to uphold Americans’ right to keep and bear arms,” AG Knudsen said in a press release announcing the action. “Lower courts, including the Washington Supreme Court, are attempting to attack and rewrite the Second Amendment.”
Knudsen added that Washington’s failure to properly interpret the Second Amendment and ban plus-10 magazines ignores both history and constitutional precedent.
“Law-abiding citizens should not be treated like criminals for exercising their right to keep and bear arms for self-defense,” he concluded. “As attorney general, I will continue to do everything in my power to ensure Americans and Montanans can protect themselves.”
In the brief, the AGs argued: “The Washington Supreme Court also botched the ‘common use’ analysis. The Second Amendment protects arms ‘typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.’ This ‘common use’ test accounts for the historical ‘tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’”
The brief continued: “So are plus-ten magazines typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes? The answer is unequivocally yes—so they cannot be considered dangerous and unusual. Those magazines are commonly used for self-defense, hunting, and sporting purposes. Washington’s restrictions, like similar restrictions in other States, burden the rights of millions of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear magazines (or ‘arms’) that have long been considered appropriate for self-defense.”
Ultimately, the AGs asked the Supreme Court to hear the case and to reverse the state supreme court’s ruling.
Along with Montana, attorneys general from Idaho, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming, and the Arizona Legislature also joined the brief.