Second Amendment Roundup: Firepower and the Fourth Circuit
The case of Snope v. Brown has been distributed for the Supreme Court’s conference for December 13. Previously styled Bianchi v. Brown, the cert petition challenges Maryland’s “assault weapon” prohibition which the Fourth Circuit upheld en banc earlier this year.
The Wall St. Journal‘s Editorial Board just took notice in “AR-15 Rifles and the Constitution” (Dec. 8), observing that the Fourth Circuit “second-guesses people who say they keep or bear an AR-15-style rifle for self-defense.” It concludes: “But the Second Amendment isn’t an inkblot on the Constitution. It means something. Can that possibly not include a right to own the gun that claims to be America’s bestselling rifle?”
Now for a deeper dive. Essential to the majority’s decision was a sadly-mistaken view of the quite ordinary ammunition that the banned rifle typically fires.
Back on March 20, the case was being argued before the Fourth Circuit en banc. Judge Harvie Wilkinson noted that “Heller talks about M16s and the like, weapons of war,” and another judge chimed in that “the AR15 is the M16.” That was the basis on which the court previously upheld the ban, which was now back in the court because the Supreme Court vacated and remanded the case for reconsideration in light of Bruen.
Judge Wilkinson asked appellants’ counsel Pete Patterson: “Have you ever fired an M-16?” Counsel: “I have not your Honor.” Judge Wilkinson: “Well I have and we used them when I was in the Army Reserve. That was way back, way way back.” (He served in 1968-69.) Judge Wilkinson went on to state:
And when we took shots at the targets, wherever we hit, there was nothing left, the kick was so powerful that when the bullets hit the human beings, it splintered them into all sorts of little pieces, there was very little left of the human being, and that was a very earlier model of the M16, and since then it’s been perfected, and perfected, and perfected into an even more lethal weapon than the ones that I used.
Actually, both back then and now, the M16 (like most AR-15s) fires the relatively-underpowered 5.56 mm cartridge. It has very little kick. And while obviously the 5.56 can be lethal, in no way does it even come close to “splintering” a human into “little pieces.” It won’t even do that to a squirrel.
While the rhetoric was toned down when the en banc decision was issued on August 6, what it said would still make any person familiar with firearms wonder what planet the court is on. But first let’s conduct a reality check on the characteristics of different higher-powered and lower-powdered rifle cartridges.
For over a century, millions of American deer hunters have chosen the .30-06 round. That is what our Armed Forces used in the M1903 bolt action rifle and the M-1 Garand semiautomatic rifle. The .308 or 7.62 cartridge, which the military used in the M-14 rifle, perhaps became the most popular deer round for a time. There are numerous other rounds on the
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