A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump this week dismissed criminal charges related to machine gun possession, citing the Second Amendment and Supreme Court precedent. The ruling underscores how the high court has expanded gun rights, as well as the broader impact Trump has had on the judiciary beyond the Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge John Broomes’ ruling on Wednesday came in the prosecution of Tamori Morgan, who was charged with two counts of possessing a machine gun under federal law. Morgan cited the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Bruen to argue that the case should be dismissed on Second Amendment grounds. Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion for the Republican-appointed majority in Bruen said that gun regulations cannot stand unless they are “consistent with this nation’s historic tradition of firearms regulation.”
The federal judge in Kansas wrote that the government in Morgan’s case had failed to meet its burden of proof “by demonstrating through historical analogies that the regulation of the guns at issue in this case is consistent with the history of firearms regulation in the country.”
The vast implications of Broomes’ ruling may not be fully realized if the government overturns it on appeal. The judge noted that the 10th U.S. Court of Appeals, which covers Kansas and neighboring states, had not yet applied Bruen to the law at issue in Morgan’s case.
There is reason to think that even this Supreme Court could side with the government if the issue reaches the justices. Just this past term, in United States v. Rahimi, the court ruled 8-1 (despite Thomas’ dissent) that gun restrictions for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders should remain in place. The Rahimi case suggests that the court is unwilling to push the Bruen precedent as far as it could.
But in the meantime, chaos threatens to erupt in gun control and public safety. That could be due to the Supreme Court’s extensive case law on guns, the lower courts’ misinterpretation of that case law, or both.
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This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
