Kansas machine gun case: Federal judge’s ruling puts every American citizen in danger | Opinion

A federal judge in Kansas last week found a ban on machine guns unconstitutional. We find that position difficult to agree with.

John W. Broomes, a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Kansas, ruled that the Second Amendment applied. We believe Judge Broomes overlooked the spirit of the amendment, Supreme Court rulings and various federal laws that have been introduced over time. His ruling OK’ing the possession of fully automatic weaponsin this case — and the precedent it could set — could put all of us at risk.

Broomes dismissed two machine gun possession counts against Tamori Morgan, a Kansas man indicted by a federal grand jury in April 2023. Broomes concluded that prosecutors failed to prove the weapons can be banned under the Second Amendment.

“The court finds that the Second Amendment applies to the weapons charged because they are ‘bearable arms’ within the original meaning of the amendment,” Broomes wrote.

The judge, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, may be legally in the right — there is no federal machine gun ban in 2024, and no state ban in Missouri or Kansas — but for decades, these guns have been restricted and outlawed and for good reason.

We need a federal automatic weapons ban, and state bans of these weapons with no restrictions.

Look, we get it, Americans love their guns. But Morgan was found with an AR-15-style machine gun and a “Glock switch” — a device that easily allows a semiautomatic handgun to be used as an automatic — according to court documents. These modified weapons do not belong on our streets. There is a reason there are laws banning the import of such dangerous devices.

Now would be the time for gun safety advocates — and like-minded politicians — to remind people no one is seriously proposing to confiscate guns from law-abiding citizens. Nor should responsible gun lovers fret about infringement on their right to bear arms for self-defense or recreational purposes. But high-powered weapons capable of firing many, many rounds in seconds have no place in a civilized society.

Yet between 2017 and 2021, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments across the country, according to federal officials. That is a lot of firepower readily available for anyone to commit a mass shooting.

In a statement, gun safety group Everytown Law said laws banning machine guns — the group labeled them “weapons of war” — are needed to keep us all safe. Janet Carter, Everytown Law’s senior director of issues and appeals, disagreed with Broomes’ ruling.

Everytown Law called the decision extreme and reckless.” We agree.

“It’s appalling that the District Court would so brazenly put the deadly agenda of the gun lobby over the safety of Kansans,” Carter said. “We are shocked and dismayed by this decision.” We all should be equally aghast.

There have been assault weapon laws to curtail, if not prohibit, these weapons since 1934, a year after the Kansas City massacre resulted in the deaths of four law enforcement officers and one convict at Union Station, with gunmen using at least one automatic rifle. In 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act became law and included a limited assault weapon ban. It was not renewed 10 years later after its built-in sunset provision expired. Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein introduced the Assault Weapons Ban of 2023 but it never went anywhere. Hello, Congress?

Today, 10 states have a ban: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia. Two other states, Minnesota and Virginia, have some regulations on assault weapons. Missouri and Kansas, unsurprisingly, have none.

Broomes should know that any device — be it nuclear, radioactive, chemical, biological or otherwise — intended to harm a large number of people is a weapon of mass destruction, according to Homeland Security. As such, we believe machine guns present a clear and present danger to us all.

Most of us would agree that the right to bear arms is fundamental to our democracy. But unfettered access to machine guns and other firearms should concern all Americans.

According to Broomes’ ruling, federal prosecutors failed to identify a historical analog to the restrictions challenged in this case.

The government “failed to demonstrate that possession of the types of weapons at issue in this case are lawfully prohibited under the Second Amendment,” Broomes wrote.

But as Everytown Law’s Carter pointed out, in 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, conservative icon U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia described the mere suggestion that a law restricting machine guns might be unconstitutional as startling. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment right is not unlimited,” Scalia wrote. It is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Based on Broomes’ decision in the Kansas case, he doesn’t seem to understand the ramifications that come with such a ruling. As a result, the safety of all Americans is in jeopardy.