The Volokh Conspiracy
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Hawaii Bill Legalizing Stun Guns Just Became Law Today, Will Become Effective Jan. 1
Rhode Island, maybe New York, Wilmington (Delaware), and a few small towns are the only places in the U.S. that still forbid stun guns.
Shortly after D.C. v. Heller was decided, stun guns were banned in seven states, D.C., the Virgin Islands, several substantial cities, and some smaller towns. (I cataloged these in Nonlethal Self-Defense, (Almost Entirely) Nonlethal Weapons, and the Rights To Keep and Bear Arms and Defend Life, 62 Stanford Law Review 199 (2009).)
But I'm pleased to say that things have gotten a good deal better. In Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016), the Court signaled that stun gun bans may well be unconstitutional, and lower courts and legislatures have largely heard the message.
By my count, since D.C. v. Heller stun gun bans have been invalidated or repealed in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Wisconsin, D.C., the Virgin Islands, Overland Park (Kansas), and Annapolis, Baltimore, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Tacoma, and in four Maryland counties (Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Harford County, and Howard County). The Illinois Supreme Court, which had held that the Second Amendment secures a right to carry guns (a matter on which courts are split), has also held that the Second Amendment likewise secures a right to carry stun guns. The logic of this opinion would also invalidate, I think, the bans on irritant sprays (such as pepper spray and mace) in some Illinois towns (see pp. 246-47 of this article).
Stun gun bans remain in effect, to my knowledge, in
- New York, where a federal district court held that the state stun gun ban was unconstitutional, but a state trial court in a different case disagreed (yes, state courts can do that),
- Rhode Island, where the ban is being challenged in federal court,
- Wilmington (Delaware) and the county in which it is located (New Castle County),
- plus some smaller towns.
Stun guns are also heavily regulated (e.g., with total bans on carrying in most places outside the home) in Connecticut and in some cities. [UPDATE: New Jersey lawyer Dan Schmutter tells me that New Jersey likely also essentially bans carrying stun guns outside the home.] For more, see this article, though the listing of restrictions in Appendix II is now out-of-date.
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I am stunned and shocked. Jolted even. I figured they would continue tilting at windmills like NY,
” . . . shall NOT be infringed . . . ”
It ain’t that hard to understand.
The backlash against gun nuts — who are no match for the advancing liberal-libertarian mainstream, not over time — is going to be sweet. And likely severe.
Let’s hope the right to possess a reasonable firearm in the home for self-defense withstands the predictable, understandable snapback.
In January 2023, the GOP will be in control of the House and Senate. For the next year and a half democrats will continue to attempt to subvert established law and the constitution, and will fail. This is likely their last chance. By 2025 the complete GOP takeover will have occurred rendering all mistakes and errors during this time of the usurper null and void. 7-2.
Last chance? Conservatives have been getting stomped in America’s culture war By better people for so long as buckleup has been alive, but this ‘Latest Last Cause’ guy is convinced his obsolete, beaten clingers are about to reverse that tide and start winning!
You will continue to comply, buckleup. Sputter as much as you like, though.
Heh, but not the gun war, there has been a wave sweeping the nation since Florida because a shall issue state 30 years ago and none of the predicted carnage happened.
Chicago is shall issue now.
Arthur, when states like Maine and New Hampshire have adopted Constitutional carry, no permit for open or concealed carry, it’s just not an issue any more, except in the 9 states still bitterly clinging to their unconstitutional gun laws.
When IS this backlash against gun owners going to come, anyway? Because I’ve been watching us win for over thirty years now, with predictions of a backlash every time.
I kind of get the impression that you just can’t accept that your side occasionally isn’t on the winning side of history. That maybe even your victories to date are just temporary, and there’s a backlash waiting for YOU.
Defund the police, while we riot, but give up your guns. No one needs a rifle, especially while looters are burning down your store with you in it.
You and the Volokh Conspirators should enjoy your wait for conservatives to arrange a long-awaited comeuppance for the liberal-libertarian mainstream, Mr. Bellmore. I will be watching you fail, enjoying it – and even more American progress shaped against conservatives’ preferences— from the reality-based perspective.
I’ve been watching the fantasy based community grow ever more insane for years. It gives me no enjoyment, the Nazis and Communists were similarly insane, and it didn’t stop them from marching millions into death camps. You’re dangerous insane, not funny insane.
But it takes a remarkable level of crazy to look back at the last three decades and think, “We’ve got those gun nuts on the run now, just you see!”
The most like trajectory here will be
(1) gun nuts, like anti-abortion absolutists, continue to embrace the conservative electoral coalition;
(2) liberal-libertarian mainstream continues to win the culture war;
(3) the improving American electorate imposes demographic doom on the conservative electoral coalition, making conservatives irrelevant in national elections (although they continue to lord over some left-behind backwaters);
(4) the gun absolutists’ and anti-abortion absolutists’ political positions capsize as the right-wing electoral coalition sinks, as public opinion, statutes, and court decisions impose a severe snapback.
See you guys down the road apiece.
They don’t just stun, though. They kill. And scientific studies have proven it. They may not be meant to kill, but just to disable. But they have stopped thousands of hearts. Even healthy hearts. Permanently.
90% of stun gun deaths involved other factors, such as head trauma, and drug use. They have been used 6 million times, and killed 100 people by themselves. That risk is acceptable compared to the use of firearms.
I want the lawyer to get familiar with the denominator, a math concept from 5th grade. Lawyer math stops at the fourth grade, that needed to count money.
People die from marshmallows, too. But not usually.
“Stun guns” is a casual term for a range of devices that belong to the category sometimes known as “electroshock” or “conductive” weapons. Sometimes included amongst other “pain compliance devices” like pepper spray.
If you think that it is necessary to ban less-lethal devices like stun guns (despite 2nd Amendment rights) because a hundred or so people have died from the electric shocks over the past few decades of millions of uses, well, you should also ban pepper spray, clubs, beanbags, fists, surfboards, beer bottles, rocks, coconuts, and every other thing that has a death rate in that range.
At which point, the police will have two options: yell at people or shoot them. Guess which will happen?
That’s why they call them less lethal devices.
I’d certainly rather be hit with a stun gun than a .357, but I generally behave so I don’t have to worry about either.
Last I heard Hawaii had an almost complete ban on hand guns. I wonder if this is a strategic move to save that law.
But I’m pleased to say that things have gotten a good deal better.
Really? You consider this delightful news?
A weapon like a stun-gun protects a smaller / weaker person — e.g., a woman or a young person — from being victimized by a bigger / stronger person (or persons). Yes, I am delighted that there will be fewer people victimized in Hawaii.
Gun absolutists have peculiar joys in this regard. They also seem to figure they will be immune from consequences associated with hitching their political wagon to the doomed, vanquished electoral coalition in the culture war. They will learn.
No, it’s terrible. The more victims the better, and stun guns are the gateway drug to real guns.
You guy just like guns, whether stun guns or any other type. Why is this? This is a serious question. A large majority of Americans want to know.
I Like freedom, liberty, and exercising my God conferred rights. Rights enumerated and protected by the United States Constitution.
A gun is just a symbol of the above. An inanimate object. The Ideal is what is important.
Agree. I would add that a gun is not only a symbol of the above — it is also the best (the only?) way to safeguard the above. Once they take your guns, they’ll take everything else from you as well.
Which type of gun does your God most like to fondle?
Guns are the canary in the constitutional rights coal mine. As clearly enumerated as a right could be, and it horrifies every would be dictator, they always go after the RKBA, and expose themselves in doing so.
Under current Constitutional law, there is (rightly) and individual right to self defense. Nothing wrong with someone choosing to make this the right they defend.
I may have issues with the simplistic views of the contours of the right, and the paranoid way they go about their defense, but there is nothing weird about the mere choice of subject.
Well just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean that someone isn’t out to get you.
But in actuality it’s the gun grabbers that are paranoid, it just makes them nervous that people own and carry guns and they can’t control that.
Exactly. It’s not the guns that the gun-grabbers want to control — it’s you.
No paranoia there. Nope. None at all.
“A large majority of Americans want to know.”
Wouldn’t you be winning more fights if that were actually true?
No.
There is a reason why large majorities of Americans don’t get their way on gun issues.
Because it’s a loser at the ballot box?
Because bans on owning and carrying guns are unconstitutional?
Because people don’t like being victims of crime and feel like owning a gun makes them safer?
It’s our system’s structural amplification of hayseed voices. Lately, some gerrymandering. And, chronically, voter suppression.
Soon enough, even those three pillars of Republican Party electoral strategy will not be enough to maintain conservatives’ ability to thwart the American mainstream’s political preferences.
Gun absolutists — and anti-abortion absolutists — to be hardest hit.
Important caveat regarding New Jersey:
Although New Jersey’s explicit ban on stun guns was held to be unconstitutional, carrying a stun gun outside the home for self defense is almost certainly still unlawful under New Jersey’s general ban on the carrying of weapons.