[HogFixer]

United States of America v. Ronald Wilson Stewart, Jr


On November 13, 2003, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion vacating Stewart's conviction for violating 18 U.S.C. § 922o, but affirmed his convictions for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Using the Morrison test, the Ninth Circuit ruled 18 U.S.C. § 922o did not have a substantial effect on interstate commerce and was unconstitutional as applied. In its opinion the circuit court wrote:

"...a homemade machine gun may be part of a gun collection or may be crafted as a hobby. Or it may be used for illegal purposes. Whatever its intended use, without some evidence that it will be sold or transferred—and there is none here—its relationship to interstate commerce is greatly attenuated."
"...section 922(o) contains no jurisdictional element anchoring the prohibited activity to interstate commerce."
"...there is no evidence that section 922(o) was enacted to regulate commercial aspects of the machine gun business. More likely, section 922(o) was intended to keep machine guns out of the hands of criminals—an admirable goal, but not a commercial one."

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Don't go into politics, we have enough people like you already.

[looscnnn]

Unlike Stewart, Fincher's past is squeaky clean so there is nothing to divert the case from Constitutionality.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Miller vs US 1939. The SC rules that "arms that are suitable and customary to contribute to the common defense" are specifically protected by the 2A.

[BOBWADE]

Not that I support everyone having a machine gun but wasn't the us v miller case decision based on the findings that the gun in question did not fit the use of the military? That would seem to support the contention that machine guns being a military assault rifle would be covered by the second amendment.

[Old Dirty Bastiat]

Citing the results of the Gonzales v. Raich case (June 5, 2005), the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case but rather to vacate the ruling below and remand it to court of appeals "in light of" Raich. The Ninth Circuit was thereby directed to reconsider Stewart and be guided in that reconsideration by Raich. Raich holds that Congress can use the Commerce Clause to ban homegrown marijuana; the implication of the Court's vacation is that Congress also has the power to criminalize the possession of homemade machine guns even though they were never involved in a commercial transaction.

This case did not reach whether 922(o) is consistent with the second amendment, only whether the commerce clause was a valid basis for congress to regulate mere possession of a machine gun. Judicial review of 922(o) in light of the second amendment still hasn't happened.