Michigan Court Strikes Down Stun Gun Ban & Says Second Amendment Applied to Open Carry

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Ammoland

Tags:Eugene Volokh|Lawsuits|Open Carry|Second Amendment|Stun Guns

By Eugene Volokh

Eugene Volokh

USA --(Ammoland.com)-  People v. Yanna (Mich. Ct. App. June 26, 2012) holds that Michigan’s stun gun ban violates the Second Amendment.

I filed an amicus brief on behalf of AWARE (Arming Women Against Rape & Endangerment) in this case, and also wrote a law review article on the subject (Nonlethal Self-Defense, (Almost Entirely) Nonlethal Weapons, and the Rights To Keep and Bear Arms and Defend Life, 62 Stanford Law Review 199 (2009)), so I’m especially pleased by the result.

I hope also that this leads to similar results in some of the other places which ban stun guns — D.C., Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Virgin Islands, and Wisconsin, as well as the several cities that take a similar view, some of which are in relatively right-to-keep-and-bear-arms-friendly areas.

The court also in the process made three broader statements:

1. The Second Amendment applies not just to firearms but to other weapons as well. “[The state] argues that Heller is strictly a gun control case, but the broad nature of the language used in Heller’s definition of arms clearly covers more than just firearms.”
2. Even weapons that are “far less prevalent than handguns” may still be protected by the Second Amendment. “The prosecution also argues that tasers and stun guns [are] ‘unusual’ or rare weapons. However, they are legal in forty-three states, and in Michigan are routinely used by law enforcement officers. They have been in use for several decades. Though far less prevalent than handguns, we do not think that stun guns or tasers may be fairly labeled as unusual weapons.”
3. The Second Amendment extends to open carrying of at least some weapons — possibly including other “protected arm[s],” such as handguns — in public, and not just to possession in the home. “The next question is whether the protected status of these arms makes unconstitutional a complete ban on carrying them in public. Heller specifically addressed only a full ban of protected weapons inside the home, not in public. Further, the analysis in Heller focused in part on the unmatched popularity of handguns for self-defense, and did not make clear to what extent greater restrictions could be applied to less popular weapons.

“On the other hand, Heller states that concealed weapons may be banned, but makes no such statement regarding openly carried arms. Indeed, Heller cites with approval two state cases that struck down laws prohibiting the public carrying of hand guns. The Second Amendment explicitly protects the right to ‘carry’ as well as the right to ‘keep’ arms. Likewise, the Michigan Constitution specifically allows citizens to ‘bear’ arms for self-defense. We therefore conclude that a total prohibition on the open carrying of a protected arm such as a taser or stun gun is unconstitutional.”

About:
Eugene Volokh is a law professor at UCLA, who specializes in free speech, religious freedom, church-state relations, and gun rights; he is the author of two textbooks, over 70 academic articles, and over 80 op-eds, and is the founder of The Volokh Conspiracy blog.

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Read more at Ammoland.com: http://www.ammoland.com/2012/06/28/michigan-court-strikes-down-stun-gun-ban/#ixzz1z6yjBlxW

From the Desk of the Founder

For those of you who weren't around when our founder, Senator H.L. Richardson, occupied his seat in the California State Senate, you may not know that he is also a very talented writer.  His writings always provide a valuable lesson or point of insight in regards to politics, conservatism, and  the Second Amendment.  He's daring in what he says and he has no shame for his honesty.

At 83 years old, his passion is still inspiring.

SO, since I am too often distracted by other responsibilities, I thought that I might post some of his writings on here.  I'll pick quotes from here and there, turn a longer article into a series, or even include clips from his books (which can be purchased here) .  I hope you find his writings interesting and helpful.  He has a passion for teaching conservative principles and motivating action, and he communicates is passion in every word he pens!

Today, a short story about coyote droppings:

Coyote Droppings

History does repeat itself, often in the strangest ways—especially when dealing with the most gullible of dupes—the misinformed humanoid. Let me give you a pithy example from the pages of Western lore.

On an early spring morning in 1874, a thousand painted warriors gathered on the high breaks of the Canadian River, in the upper reaches of the Texas Panhandle. They were there to scalp the “white eyes”; the twenty-eight buffalo hunters camped below. The place was called “Adobe Walls,” nothing more than several crudely thrown together sod structures in a open flat - surrounded on three sides by flat topped bluffs. Waiting for the early light, hidden behind the surrounding ridges were close to a thousand Comanche, Arapaho, Kiowa and Cheyenne braves, eager to surprise the buffalo hunters asleep in the valley below.

The painted savages were extremely confident and excited at the prospect of having a scalp dance that night and why not? They had been convinced by Ishatai, the Comanche medicine man, that victory was assured because his “medicine” was great. The Indians believed he had great puha [that’s power]. The Comanche prophet had predicted that no harm could possibly come to any of them. His medicine was so strong that bullets bounced off of him and he, the great Ishatai, would give his “medicine," his protective power, to each brave.

The highly superstitious braves believed Ishatai, whose name by the way, translated into English, means Coyote Droppings or Wolf’s Rear End.

However, things didn’t quite go as expected. The buffalo hunters were not asleep and as soon as the attack began, there were dead and wounded Indians scattered all around the mud dwellings. Coyote Droppings, covered with yellow war paint, sat on his white war pony nearly a mile away, observing the fight, not once venturing near the battle. The father of a downed brave taunted Ishatai to rescue his wounded son. “Why not ride into the fray since you said that bullets couldn’t hurt you?” The medicine man didn’t move a muscle, that is, not until Billy Dixon, one of the buffalo hunters, cut loose with his 50-caliber Sharps rifle from over 1500 yards away, knocking the Indian next to Coyote Droppings off his horse.

It was a bad day for the Indians and for Wolf’s Rear End’s “medicine”. The “white eyes” survived.

You would think that the medicine man would have been run out of the tribe for being such a lousy prophet but Coyote Droppings had someone else to blame. He explained that it wasn’t his fault. Some dirty Indian killed a skunk on the way to the fight and that nefarious act broke the spell, jinxing his magic thereby allowing the bullets to kill.

Believe it or not, the superstitious Indians bought this whopper. Ishatai continued to be a respected Comanche chief and medicine man until his death, many, many years later.

Primate lore is filled with examples of witch doctors and medicine men that claimed to possess puha. This “power”--- the medicine men acquired from dreams. More often than not, their ticket to dreamland was through fasting or chewing the drug peyote. They would then tell the tribe their dreams, saying they had just had communion with the gods. Such men will always succeed whenever you have superstitious, primitive and gullible natives who believe such things.

Little wonder such primitive customs and beliefs were dumped in the trashcan of history by Americans -- or were they? Has much changed from the 1880’s? One wonders when we view our fellow Americans gullibly swallowing the newest “spin” dished out by the modern day medicine men posing as a “consensus of scientists’ backed by the United Nations and hawked by “objective” reporters, TV commentators, and led by left-wing politicians who see another great way to enlarge government. These “spin masters” don’t need peyote to dream up images for the masses to consume, all they need is enough gullible uneducated fools who believe “it can happen here.”

“Global Warming” anyone?

Written by Senator H.L. Richardson, 2008