JAIME CAETANO v. MASSACHUSETTS
Supreme Court of the United States, Per Curiam, Filed March 21, 2016,
Second amendment – Stun Guns are not disqualified from coverage under the Second Amendment for reasons related to their lack of existence at the time of the country’s founding, that they are a “modern invention”, or that they are not readily adaptable to military use.
(Concur – Alito joined by Thomas – “the pertinent Second Amendment inquiry is whether stun guns are commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes today.”)
Also, see below: Justice Alito is standing up for the rights of women! Albeit where that right is limited to not having to shoot their baby-daddies down with a gun…
While not explicitly stating that tasers are covered by the 2nd Amendment, the Court rejected Massachusetts’ attempts to differentiate them from the firearms examined in Heller.
A very brief per curiam for the Court. One assumes that these Per Curiams were drafted by Scalia, but if so then their poetry left with him, had yet to be instilled, or was removed without him there to back it.
Justice Alito wrote an interesting concurrence strongly suggesting that I might be able to start carrying around a samurai sword. It is a “weapon of offence” or “thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands,” that is “carried … for the purpose of offensive or defensive action.” There have been hundreds of thousands of them sold across the world and are legal in many states (I’d say “most,” but then I’d have to actually check).
But his concurrence strongly backed the defendant after having successfully used a stun gun to get her child’s father to stop harassing her (at least in one instance). The Massachusetts court held that the defendant could have obtained a handgun, but not a stun gun.
Alito criticized as follows:
a weapon is an effective means of self-defense only if one is prepared to use it, and it is presumptuous to tell Caetano she should have been ready to shoot the father of her two young children if she wanted to protect herself.
In stark contrast to state and federal cases regarding stun guns, Alito notes in his concurrence:
By arming herself, Caetano was able to protect against a physical threat that restraining orders had proved useless to prevent. And, commendably, she did so by using a weapon that posed little, if any, danger of permanently harming either herself or the father of her children.
And in closing
A State’s most basic responsibility is to keep its people safe. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was either unable or unwilling to do what was necessary to protect Jaime Caetano, so she was forced to protect herself. Tomake matters worse, the Commonwealth chose to deploy its prosecutorial resources to prosecute and convict her ofa criminal offense for arming herself with a nonlethal weapon that may well have saved her life. The SupremeJudicial Court then affirmed her conviction on the flimsiest of grounds. This Court’s grudging per curiam now sends the case back to that same court. And the consequences for Caetano may prove more tragic still, as her conviction likely bars her from ever bearing arms for self-defense. If the fundamental right of self-defense does not protect Caetano, then the safety of all Americans is left to the mercy of state authorities who may be more concerned about disarming the people than about keeping them safe.