The Patriot Post® · SCOTUS Unanimously Backs Second Amendment

Citizens have the Second Amendment right to keep and bear stun guns according to the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling. This is significant because in this post-DC v. Heller and post-Antonin Scalia age, the Court has enough sense to know that self-defense is a universal right, one that doesn’t require someone carrying a .45 S&W. Less lethal measures can do. The case revolved around the plight of Jamie Caetano, a small-statured woman who was going through a rough patch. She was living in a motel room and the father of her two children was abusive — so much so that she once needed medical attention after he beat her. As protection, one of Caetano’s friends gave her a stun gun to protect herself. Despite restraining orders, the abusive ex showed up waiting for her to get off work one night. Caetano merely brandished the stun gun and scared him off. When the police came and sorted everything out, however, they arrested her for possessing an unlawful weapon.

As Massachusetts reasoned to the high court, the Second Amendment doesn’t protect stun guns because when it was written Ben Franklin was still flying kites in thunderstorms and stun gun technology was unheard of. Furthermore, Massachusetts (incorrectly) noted that stun guns are not used by the military.

But at a time when the court is evenly split along partisan lines, The Wall Street Journal notes that SCOTUS is enforcing the landmark decision of Heller, not seeking to undermine its broad scope — at least not yet.

As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in an opinion accompanying the per curiam decision, “Electronic stun guns are no more exempt from the Second Amendment’s protections, simply because they were unknown to the First Congress, than electronic communications are exempt from the First Amendment, or electronic imaging devices are exempt from the Fourth Amendment.”