U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- The Hawai’i Federal District Court has issued an opinion in Teter v. Connors that guts the Second Amendment.
The opinion holds that even if butterfly or “balisong” knives are protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, a state law banning any possession, manufacture or transport of such knives is constitutionally valid. From the opinion:
The popularity of an all-encompassing class of weapon (the knife, or even the folding knife)is immaterial when only one narrow subset of the class (the butterfly knife) is banned here.The Court declines to treat the ban on butterfly knives—a relatively obscure weapon—the same way the Heller Court viewed the ban on handguns—the “quintessential”self-defense weapon. Doing so would neglect the Supreme Court’s emphasis on the regulated weapon at issue—and by extension much of the Court’s reasoning that led to its ultimate holding. This case simply does not amount to the same level of “destruction of the [Second Amendment] right” as Heller.
The plaintiffs are appealing the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals.
The District Court opinion shows how appeals courts hostile to the Second Amendment have been successfully salami slicing away Second Amendment rights.
The Supreme Court has been deadlocked and unable or unwilling to protect the exercise of those rights. Without the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, the Second Amendment would be dead letter law across the United States. Instead, federal appeals courts in circuits hostile to the Second Amendment have been using the lack of SCOTUS action to slice away most meaningful Second Amendment protections in several Circuits, notably the Ninth and the Second Circuits.
The first salami slice is the claim that Heller is a very narrow decision, only protecting the defense of self and others in the home with commonly available handguns.
The Supreme Court has not corrected this extreme position, allowing lower courts to claim Second Amendment protections do not extend outside the home; do not cover semi-automatic rifles; do not cover magazines; do not cover ammunition; do not cover the ability to sell guns, do not cover the ability to store unlocked firearms in the home, ready for use.
This is the core of the argument used in the Hawai’i District Court opinion.
In this extreme view, handguns in the home are the only “core” of what is protected by Second Amendment rights.
In this view, knives are not mentioned in Heller, therefore the court is free to declare that certain knives are not as protected as handguns.
The particular Hawaii law only bans a particular type of knife. The Court’s opinion in Teter v. Connors is the law is Constitutional because it does not ban all knives. Heller rejected this viewpoint with Caetano, unanimously clarifying the Second Amendment applies to all bearable arms.
With the “salami” approach to the Second Amendment, laws banning all magazines which hold more than one round of ammunition, all ammunition of greater power than a .22 short, and all knives except for butter knives, could be banned, bit by bit, and pass Constitutional muster.
Laws that forbid the carry of weapons outside the home would be Constitutional.
Laws banning carry outside the home are already in effect in New York City and Hawaii.
It is absurd. It shows the arrogance of the District Court, and its belief the Supreme Court will do nothing to prevent a wholesale ban of most weapons in most circumstances, as long as it is done salami slice by salami slice.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
“The argument for flexibility and it goes something like this. The Constitution is over 200 years old. Societies change and it must change or it will become brittle and break but you would have to be an idiot to believe that.”
Antonin Scalia
I thought that psychopathic control freak was a synonym for politician.
It is an accurate as hell description. I’m the one who called them that and have been calling them that for the last 20 years of my life. It is OBVIOUS that is what they are.
I would say, “F—em and feed them fish heads,” but it is Hawaii and they would probably like that
and rice.
I’m just done with all of it. We got these black robe intellectual thugs dreaming up any way possible to infringe on our right to keep and bear arms. Meanwhile we got local and state politicians taking advantage of private security while they keep We The People litterally muzzled and locked down while throngs of angry rioters and looters destroy our communities.Not one more minute. All bets are off.Don’t like my knife or gun? Come and take it!
Guaranteeing people’s, specifically newly freed Black people’s, tight to keep and bear arms was one of the arguments advanced to pass the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was intended to strip the Second Amendment. It dawns on me that the state of Hawaii is in a state of violation of the 14th Amendment and subject to the penalties in Section 3 of that Amendment. In fact, the same could be applied to New York and California, the question is, who has the authority to invoke these penalties?
We do, when we take up arms and start shooting these bastards.
Not soon enough. It should have boiled over in 1934 with the NFA. Or in 1903 with the Dick Act, or in 1913 with the Federal Reserve act. Or when Rosenfeld outlawed gold, or, or, or…OH WAIT…IT SHOULD HAVE BOILED OVER A LONG TIME AGO.
Wow! Talk about “double speak”. TWO totally contradictory thoughts in one statement and it is considered RIGHT? Seems to me that the “judges” need to go back to school and get some reading comprehesion lessons so that their CO2 addled brains can work a bit better. (addling caused by mask wearing)
CL,
Who are you replying to? If it’s Hippybiker, you totally misunderstood Scalia’s statement. It was a restatement of the “Progressive” view of the Constitution and a refutation.
Wrong. Judges don’t wear masks. Masks are for we peons.
Tionico,
Are talking about the same comment?
Look down. HB quoted Scalia on the CONSTITUTION. It didn’t have anything to do with masks. That’s why I asked CL who he was replying to.
“Unfortunately, our liberties rest on the outcome of the 2020 election.” NOT!!!!! Our liberties rest only on what we are willing to put at risk to defend, preserve, and enforce to retain our liberties. Election outcomes, judicial activism, legislative malfeasance, traitorous tyranny merely request our compliance. It is up to American individuals whether to relinquish our liberties. That is why our Founding Fathers gave us the Second Amendment. Not to give us the ability to defend our liberties, a pre-existing right endowed by our Creator at Creation, but to commemorate and remind us of those rights and liberties……and to put… Read more »
These knives must scare the hell out of these stupid leftist democrats. I can recall these knives at school back in the 70s and and they were banned along with switch blades and stilettos (the blade kind). I carried an international orange government issued switch blade as aircrew member, it was dull, short and totally useless as a survival knife. Even politicians back then never considered the perps with the weapon, just the steel. Here we are again making society innocent of wrong doing and blaming inanimate objects as the root of all evil.
Perhaps during his second term Trump can motivate the Senate to aggressively move to impeach all federal judges who so blatantly disregard the plain understanding of the Constitution and SCOTUS decisions. As well, all federal judges whose opinions contain bogus citations such as the majority of Second Circuit, Second Amendment cases. … I’ll leave discussion of removing “activists” in general for another day.