But it raises a question: Washington has passed a suite of new gun laws in the last decade. If each new law needs a “historical analogue” from 1791-era America, could many more gun laws be at risk?

There were no magazines in 1791, much less high-capacity magazines. So there were no bans on high-capacity magazines.

Washington, last year, banned AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles. Such weapons did not exist in 1791 and so, obviously, weren’t banned.

Washington, this year, banned the carrying of guns in zoos, aquariums and public transit facilities. There were no zoos or buses in 1791 America, so there weren’t bans on carrying guns in those places.

At least a half-dozen lawsuits are pending in Washington, challenging the constitutionality of the state’s gun laws.

The debate, of course, is more than theoretical, not just an intriguing thought experiment. Nearly 50,000 Americans a year die from firearms, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Studies have repeatedly found that states with stricter gun laws tend to have less gun violence.

High-capacity magazines were legal to buy and sell in Washington for about 90 minutes last Monday, after Bashor issued his opinion and before the state Supreme Court halted it from taking effect. In that time, Gator’s Custom Guns, the Kelso gun shop at the heart of the litigation, sold hundreds of high-capacity magazines, said Wally Wentz, the store’s owner.

Bashor’s opinion follows the 2022 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case known as Bruen, striking down New York’s law requiring concealed-carry license applicants to demonstrate a special need for self-defense.

>>1287294
gun ownership rights are never going to be human rights

In Bruen, the Supreme Court tossed aside the traditional way of evaluating gun laws: weighing the public interest against the individual’s right. Instead, courts now had to determine whether a gun law is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition.” The ruling has led to hundreds of court cases nationwide challenging the constitutionality of both new and longstanding gun laws.

Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation, thinks a lot of Washington’s gun laws are in jeopardy.

“All because of the 1791-era analogue that anti-gun people can’t find because it doesn’t exist,” Gottlieb said.

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Gottlieb’s organization has filed numerous lawsuits seeking to invalidate gun laws in Washington and elsewhere.

How could there be a 1791 analogue regulating something that wasn’t created until years or decades later?

“In 1791 it wasn’t just the Second Amendment, it was also the First Amendment era,” Gottlieb said. “There were no satellite dishes, there was no internet, there were no high-speed printing presses, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t protected by the First Amendment. New technology is still protected by the Bill of Rights.”

Attorney General Bob Ferguson, in court filings, called Bashor’s ruling an “extreme outlier.”

>>1287296
the right to keep and bear arms always has been and always will be a basic human right. keep crying, tranny

“There is nothing unreasonable about restricting the sale of deadly
[high-capacity magazines] when the unrebutted evidence shows they make mass shootings and other horrific crimes more frequent and more
deadly, and when the evidence shows they are not used for self-defense,” Ferguson wrote.

Zach Pekelis, a lawyer with Pacifica Law Group who represents Alliance for Gun Responsibility and Oregon Alliance for Gun Safety, said the Cowlitz County judge interpreted Bruen incorrectly.

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“Just because you didn’t see the exact type of regulation in 1791 or 1868 doesn’t mean that the modern law is unconstitutional,” Pekelis said. “Different technologies and different societal concerns have evolved and perhaps even dramatically changed over time and the Constitution is supposed to be adaptive in that way.”

Bruen, Pekelis noted, does not require “a historical twin,” just a “historical analogue.”

For instance, there may not have been historical bans on carrying guns in zoos and on buses, but there were historical bans on carrying guns in “sensitive places” like courthouses, schools and government buildings.

“The key question is whether modern and historical regulations impose a comparable burden,” Pekelis said, “and whether that burden is comparably justified.”

The Supreme Court didn’t specify whether lower courts (and historians) should look to 1791, when the Second Amendment was adopted, or to 1868, when the 14th Amendment, which applies the Second Amendment to the states, was adopted.

“We need not address this issue today,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the 6-3 court.

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But lower courts across the country have been puzzled about how to proceed.

Last summer, a federal judge in Mississippi dismissed a case against a man charged with having a gun as a convicted felon, because the law prohibiting possession by a felon is from 1938, not 1791 or 1868, and the government didn’t present a sufficient historical analogue.

But he expressed concern about the situation he found himself in.

“Judges are not historians,” U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves wrote. “Yet the standard articulated in Bruen expects us ‘to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication.'”

In the Cowlitz County case, the state, in defending its law, pointed to a litany of historical laws it said were analogous to the modern ban on high-capacity magazines.

But Bashor, a 2011 appointee of former Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire, dismissed them all as either too old, too new or not relevant.

“Most of the laws provided are post-1868 and are not relevant to the analysis,” Bashor wrote.

The state cites a 1771 New Jersey law that prohibited “trap guns,” which could be fired by someone or something triggering a rope or wire.

Bashor knocks that analogy as it “predates the Declaration of Independence and the creation of the Second Amendment.”

He writes that it was a “hunting regulation so its purpose was not firearms regulation.” But Bashor links to the original law, which seems to regulate trap guns for reasons beyond hunting. The law begins: “Whereas a most dangerous Method of setting Guns has too much prevailed in this Province …”

Fifteen states followed New Jersey’s lead in regulating trap guns, but Bashor finds all those laws wanting because they weren’t “near the founding.”

Historical laws regulating gunpowder, which was necessary for firing guns in 1791, “were for the purpose of fire control, not firearms regulation,” Bashor writes, and are not relevant.

The state cites numerous laws regulating Bowie knives, but Bashor dismisses those as regulating weapons, but not firearms.

“Reviewing courts,” a U.S. district judge wrote in 2022 about interpreting Bruen, “must find the goldilocks of historical analogues: not too old, not too new, but just right.”

And just as the ideal porridge temperature is in the eye of the beholder (or mouth of the taster), judges have looked at near-identical laws and at identical history and come to different conclusions.

A federal judge in Oregon looked at that state’s ban on high-capacity magazines and, after a weeklong trial, found reasonable historical analogues to justify the new law.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut cited the New Jersey trap gun law approvingly. She cited 19th century Bowie knife laws and finds them “tailored to address the particular features of the weapons that made them most dangerous to public safety.” She looks at gunpowder and finds that it “posed a threat to public safety at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification” and writes that states responded with regulations.

In Bruen, the Supreme Court wrote that “dramatic technological changes” or “unprecedented societal concerns” can give courts more nuance in interpreting modern gun laws.

But Bashor writes that high-capacity magazines are not new technology and that mass shootings do not represent unprecedented societal concerns.

Immergut, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, finds the opposite, writing that from 1776 to 1949 there was no example of a mass shooting resulting in double-digit fatalities (excluding events like race riots and labor riots). She writes that a handgun with a large-capacity magazine can be reloaded in about three seconds, while the typical muzzleloading musket available in 1791 could be reloaded and fired three times per minute.

Both state bans on high-capacity magazines are now on appeal. In Washington, the state is appealing to the state Supreme Court. A hearing on the Cowlitz County case is scheduled for Wednesday.

In Oregon, gun rights groups are appealing to a federal appellate court, while the state pursues an appeal of a state court ruling saying the law could not be enforced.

California’s bans on high-capacity magazines and on AR-15-style rifles are both on appeal, after each was invalidated by the same federal judge.

“You’ve seen this storyline before and I think it’s important not to be too alarmed that a single judge takes a different view,” Pekelis said. “That’s why we have appellate courts, to correct errors.”

David Gutman: 206-464-2926 or dgutman@seattletimes.com;
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>blah blah blah
>We homo globalists cant seem to find a good way to enslave the americans into submission without taking all the guns first...
ftfy

>>1287298
>the right to keep and bear arms always has been and always will be a basic human right.
Gun ownership rights are not human rights or Natural Rights
Gun ownership is a legal right given by citizens in a democracy.
"God" didn't give you this right.
"Nature" didn't give you this right.
People did.
Humans don't want potential maniacs having weapons of lethal destruction.

The right to keep and bear arms is a not God given right.
God didn't give you the ability to pick up a stick and hit someone with it to defend yourself
''Natural'' selection you the ability to pick up a stick.

But as a human, I grant you the "human" right by creating "human" laws to carry your stick around, and if you decide to use your stick to try and mass murder 100 people in a night club,
My human law will then pick up your pieces and then put them in jail

try again closet ladyboy lover

>>1287439
You are posting in a schizo gun nut thread. Ignore him. He'll go away eventually.

>>1287439
rights don't come from the state, faggot. you have been blown the fuck out on this time and time and time again. That is why the 2nd amendment says >shall not be infringed, not >people have the right to. The 2nd amendment is literally a law limiting the government, it does not limit the people at all. keep coping there tranny faggot. you seem to be very upset and that is why you are projecting the gay shit
>>1287442
samefag

>>1287443
>Everyone that disagrees with me is the same person!
Meds. You must take them.

>>1287458
we've seen your leaked discord, tranny

>>1287294
>Washington's judge shopping
>any governor that signs a gun law that is found to be unconstitutional
Republicunts complaining about judge shopping and passing blatantly unconstitutional laws is hilarious
Almost as hilarious as your hypocritical ass only having problems when it applies to gun laws
Maybe advocate for stopping this process altogether?

Too bad, but Republicans blocked efforts to stop judge shopping because they need it to continue their bad faith bullshit, and if they couldn't pass unconstitutional laws their base would eat them alive.

>>1287460
Source?

>>1287472
>Republicunts complaining about judge shopping
When does the GOP block people from suing in the district they want? king hawaii judge blocked tons of shit the WA fag tried to pass a law that said you could only sue in one county the capital was where all the judges were far left jews.
> and passing blatantly unconstitutional laws is hilarious
the GOP doesn't pass unconstitutional shit. only dems do.
judge shopping is based when the people do it and gay when the government tries to stop it

>>1287460
Hopefully it was the one where we scheme about fucking up 4chan and not the one where we try to get nudes of boys.

>>1287294
Thanks for posting this anon, as a lifeling Washingtonian I can once again say that Bob Ferguson can suck my fat hairy balls, what a useless tax wasting headlines chaser

>>1287614
What's it like being an extremist minority?

>>1287616
a. protecting gun rights is neither extremist or a minority. that is why federal gun control keeps getting btfod
b. even if it is, the constitution exists to protect minorities and the constitution is explicitly clear that what WA is doing is a human rights violation and not within their power

>>1287458
It must be a step on their shill flowchart, it always seems to happen when people disagree with them

>>1287616
Weird how dems love minorities except when it comes to constitutional rights

>>1287627
You get everything you know about
'dems' from clickbait and twatter. That's one of the many reasons why no one listens to you.

>>1287628
you literally are arguing in this fucking topic that pro guns are a minority and shouldn't have rights, retard

>>1287628
Weird projection

>>1287628
Find me a dem who does not support gun control.

>>1287628
You get everything you know about
'Alt-right' from fake news MSM and twatter. That's one of the many reasons why I don't listen to a california fag.
(see what I did there)

>>1287295
the fact that ARs are basically never used in crimes and dems still want to ban them shows it isn't about crime, its about trying to disarm regular people

>>1287628
Don't forget his severe schizophrenia. Gun nut schizo gets a lot of his talking points from that too.

>>1287745
post medical credentials, jew boi

>>1287748
you're on israel's side conservative shill. why do i always have to remind you

>>1287753
dems and brandon keep approving aid to isreal so they can pay their MIC donors, fag boi

>>1287757
Seek psychiatric help

>>1287760
post medical credentials

>>1287439
>Gun ownership rights are not human rights or Natural Rights
>Gun ownership is a legal right given by citizens in a democracy.
>"God" didn't give you this right.

WRONG!
Completely wrong.

In the Gospels when Jesus sends His Apostles out the 2nd time, tells them to "Bring a sword (the current weapon of warfare), if you don't have one, go sell your Tunic and buy one (Sword).

God told us (not necessary You) to carry arms - weapons of war!

Any elected officials who introduce or vote for a bill intended to remove or infringe upon any Constitutionally protected Right should at least be removed from office for lying under the oath they took (To support and defend the Constitution...)
...or preferably, tried for Violation of Rights Under Color of Law (18USC241&242) & Imprisoned for 10 years!

>>1287845
exactly

antigunners seething itt

>>1287439
>legal right given by citizens in a democracy.
That's neither how rights nor democracies work

>>1287439
>Gun ownership rights are not human rights or Natural Rights

(You) are a Liar and a Fool