Last week, a federal judge in Kansas issued an unprecedented ruling: U.S. District Judge John Broomes, a Trump appointee, held that a longtime ban on possessing machine guns is unconstitutional, dismissing charges against a man indicted for having one. The decision isn’t likely to stand for long, Second Amendment scholar Jacob Charles wrote on social media, but “the fact it occurred is another signal that Bruen” — the landmark 2022 Supreme Court case that imposed a hazy “history and tradition” test for gun cases — “is simply choose your own adventure.” 

The metaphor is apt. Post-Bruen, gun lawsuits can move through the courts the same way a 10-year-old flips through a “Give Yourself Goosebumps” book: When it seems like you hit a dead end, you can quickly backtrack and wind your way through alternate paths until you “win.” Several recent legal decisions and developments, citing or echoing Bruen, have demonstrated this back-and-forth. Here’s a rundown of what we’ve seen the past couple of weeks.

First, more from federal courts: On Monday, the 8th Circuit officially overturned Missouri’s “Second Amendment sanctuary” law, which penalized police in the state from enforcing certain federal gun restrictions. That decision came on the heels of another 8th Circuit gun ruling: Earlier this month, the federal appeals court found that the ATF’s rule about pistol braces, a popular accessory for AR-15-style pistols, is “arbitrary and capricious,” and directed a request to block it back to a lower court. The notoriously conservative 5th Circuit, meanwhile, delivered some welcome news to criminal justice reform advocates: Judges said that a habitual marijuana user can’t be barred from having guns, ruling that “history and tradition before us support, at most, a ban on carrying firearms while an individual is presently under the influence.” The Justice Department this week urged a federal judge to toss a Florida challenge to a Biden administration rule meant to reduce the number of firearms sold without background checks. Florida, which revised its lawsuit this month, argues that the rule is costing it tax revenue from gun shows.

In state-level news, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down a 67-year-old law banning switchblades, finding that under Bruen, the weapons are protected arms under the Second Amendment. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton is throwing a fit — and opening a legal can of worms — over the State Fair’s decision to ban all guns at this October’s event in response to a shooting there last year. And as The Trace’s Will Van Sant detailed this week, a gun rights group was forced to drop its challenge to a Colorado’s ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines after, as the group’s executive director put it, “some friendly fire within the gun rights world”: The case crumbled after the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group, refused to allow its researcher to be deposed in the case.

Finally, a development concerning the country’s highest judicial body: Gun rights groups are asking the Supreme Court to take up a case that would decide whether state restrictions on AR-15-style rifles are constitutional. Should the court add it to the upcoming term, that means justices could more definitively determine the limits — or lack thereof — of the Second Amendment. (Cooper & Kirk, a D.C. law firm connected to a secret multimillion-dollar operation to dismantle America’s gun laws, is one of the entities involved in the effort.)

So what does it all add up to? Even after the Supreme Court’s opinion this summer in U.S. v. Rahimi, a major gun case in which justices tried to clarify the bounds of Bruen’s constitutional test, not much has changed since 2022 — litigants are still choosing their own adventure. As Frederick Vars, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, told The Trace’s Chip Brownlee two years ago, “The law is now unsettled.” It remains so.

From The Trace

What to Know This Week

Florida’s extreme risk protection order law, often referred to as a “red flag” law, was associated with an 11 percent reduction in gun homicides from 2019 to 2021, according to a recent study. The research is among the first to link these policies with a significant decrease in firearm homicides. Florida’s red flag law was enacted with bipartisan support after the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland — but as The Trace’s Mike Spies revealed, these policies are under unprecedented threat from a radical gun rights group’s “Capture the Flag” legal campaign. [JAMA] 

In June, YouTube said it would prevent minors from seeing videos that promote “do-it-yourself” firearms. But a new report from the Tech Transparency Project found that the platform is failing to enforce those age restrictions. The watchdog group’s test account for a 14-year-old was pointed to videos featuring auto sears, 3D-printed guns, and homemade silencers. [Bloomberg] 

Many Americans living in rural areas experience higher rates of shootings — including police shootings, per a new study — than their urban counterparts. In Kern County, California, which had the highest gun homicide rate in California per capita between 2016 and 2021, residents are desperate to understand what’s driving the violence, and how they can stop it. [Axios/The Guardian] 

In 2020, the police shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake Jr. and the subsequent killings of two protesters by Kyle Rittenhouse turned Kenosha, Wisconsin, into a lightning rod for nationwide anger. The tensions were still present two years later, echoing amid a debate over local gun policies and concerns about law enforcement. As the presidential election approaches, where do community members stand now? [NPR] 

Saturday marks five years since a shooter killed seven people and injured 25 others during a highway rampage in Odessa, Texas. The small town, located in the state’s Permian Basin region, is unveiling a monument to the lives lost in the tragedy and their loved ones. For Rosie Granados, whose twin sister was killed, this time of year is especially painful: “It’s like time passes, but it also freezes.” [The Texas Tribune] 

A federal judge threw out major felony charges against two former Louisville, Kentucky, officers accused of preparing a falsified search warrant that led to police killing Breonna Taylor in 2020. The judge wrote that “there is no direct link between the warrantless entry” and Taylor being shot by officers raiding her home, and ruled that the actions of Taylor’s boyfriend, who fired a single shot at what he thought were intruders, were instead the legal cause of her death. [Louisville Courier Journal/Associated Press]

In Memoriam

Andrea Rodriguez Avila, 21, “knew what she was capable of,” a close friend said — the type of person who “knew what she wanted and how to get it.” Avila was found shot and killed in her dorm room at Rice University in Houston this week. She grew up in Maryland, and had transferred to Rice this past spring after obtaining her associate’s degree from the Community College of Baltimore County. She threw herself into academic life: At the community college, Avila served as president of an honor society, chaired the student programming board, and was active in several other student organizations; at Rice, where she majored in political science, she was a student ambassador, a representative on the Honor Council, and a peer academic adviser. She spent last summer in a prestigious internship at Johns Hopkins University. Avila’s ambition was clear to all who knew her — but just as clear was her readiness to support those around her. “She was just really brave and really balanced in doing things,” the friend said. “She was self-assured.”

We Recommend

The Thin Purple Line: On the dubious rise of the private — and increasingly armed — security industry. [Harper’s]

Pull Quote

“People tend to talk a lot about gun violence in big cities. But a lot of our rural areas are ignored.”

— Juan Avila, the chief operating officer of Garden Pathways, a community-based violence interruption and mentorship program, on gun violence in rural Kern County, California, to The Guardian

Sunny Sone
Sunny is in charge of our newsletters, leading the growth of existing products and dreaming up new ones. They previously worked as a copy editor at The Intercept and as digital editor for the Texas Observer, and co-published a web-only magazine under the Brick House media cooperative. Sunny has covered topics ranging from the Texas funeral industry to the life of visionary composer Pauline Oliveros. They hold a degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin.