The brief from Jake Charles and Luke Smith Morgan seems focused on reinforcing a tough "first step" in the Bruen analysis.
It's a little funny their summary claims Hemani and Wolford "reiterated" the two-step inquiry, when Professor Charles complained extensively on fake twitter about how the Court watered down step one.
(In reality, the Court really was just reiterating what it had said before: step one was never intended to be some difficult test to meet, and Bruen is substantively a one-step historical analysis, with a simple qualifier)
I'm having trouble understanding how this proposed "double history" test would work in this very case, and they weirdly don't provide an example of that analysis. Which you'd think they'd do given they are proposing it as an alternative.
So, take the AR15. Does it meet the plain text under the Jake Charles test?
At step one, yes it is an arm, and in terms of history, yes it is useful for combat, personal self-defense, hunting, and sport, which is what the founders would have considered protected (in that order).
At step two, prior to 1900 no gun had ever been banned, including the revolvers and repeating rifles that proliferated after the civil war.
So does Jake Charles think we win? If so, why didn't he write in our support, or do a "neither party" brief a la Akhil Amar?
Jake Charles is concerned the government is going to lose cases it "should most readily win."
But the opposite is what is actually happening. The First Circuit, for example, just used its tortured "plain text analysis" to say that there is no right to acquire arms, and a violation only occurs if a judge deems restrictions on acquisition sufficiently "abusive."
The Ninth Circuit, in all likelihood, is going to rule that an ammo background check regime which wrongfully denied over 10% of people who use it is not a "meaningful constraint" on the Second Amendment.
Any substantive "plain text" analysis should be expressly forbidden by the Court. The lower courts have already shown they will abuse it.
Fundamental rights don't live behind a paywall. That’s why SAF is suing Santa Clara County for its abusive CCW permit fees, and why @AAGDhillon’s office just sent a nastygram to Glendale.
The City of Glendale, California, cannot impose unconstitutional $2,000 costs to obtain a concealed carry permit for lawful firearms. We @CivilRights gave them one week to fix it. Tick tock!
Next up let's look at the brief from the state AGs.
Looks like they got 18 + DC. On our end, we had 27 state AGs in our support.
Note that several of the states that joined this brief are from states which do NOT have an AWB currently, in case you were wondering what they have planned for you if we were to lose this case.
Starting the Giffords brief. It's funny how they argue different states should be allowed to pass different things based on their needs.
If that's true, why do they argue for a national AWB?
As usual, Giffords is intellectually dishonest, hiding what its true goal is to suit its audience. We have seen this time and time again from them, e.g.:
1. Opposing constitutional carry because shall issue exists, but being angry when blue states were forced to go shall issue;
2. Opposing our NFA win because NFA registration has, they claim, made it so that suppressors and SBRs are rarely used in crimes, but they still support states like California having total bans on suppressors.
Plenty more examples.
