First Circuit puzzled by challenge to Massachusetts handgun ban

The state’s handgun restrictions are “preposterous,” a Trump administration lawyer argued, but judges weren’t so sure.BOSTON (CN) — Massachusetts laws that prohibit the sale of some of the most popular handguns in the country came under heavy fire from the Trump administration at the First Circuit Wednesday, but despite a lengthy oral argument that went well beyond its scheduled time, the judges seemed perplexed at the end of the hearing as to whether the laws violated the Second Amendment.“What are we supposed to do?” U.S. Circuit Chief Judge David Barron asked several times at the end of the argument, and he seemed genuinely uncertain.Massachusetts doesn’t ban all handguns, but it prohibits dealers from selling them unless the weapons meet complex requirements set by the state legislature and the state attorney general.Among other things, handguns must have a specific melting point, tensile strength and density; a specific trigger pull weight; a load indicator; a magazine safety disconnect; a specific barrel length and a tamper-resistant serial number.The result is that many of the most common handguns in the U.S. can’t be sold in the Bay State, including the Glock 17, 19 and 43X; the Sig Sauer P365; the Springfield Armory Hellcat and the Shadow Systems MR920.A group of gun dealers and buyers challenged the Massachusetts restrictions, with the Trump administration joining the case as an amicus to urge that the laws be overturned.It’s “preposterous” to suggest a state can ban the commercial sale of the most popular firearms in this country, Department of Justice attorney Barry Arrington said.“This regulation is a historical outlier,” Arrington said. “And it’s an outlier even today in terms of regulations around the country.” He added that in the era when the Second Amendment was adopted, “people would have thought this was crazy.”A lower court upheld the Massachusetts laws last year, finding the Second Amendment wasn’t implicated at all, because the laws still allowed citizens to buy many types of handguns. The court then added that, even if the Second Amendment applied, the laws were valid, because they had historical precedents in colonial-era safety restrictions.On appeal, the state pressed the argument that the Second Amendment didn’t apply at all.The laws only regulate the sale of guns, not the ability to possess them, Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General Phoebe Fischer-Groban argued. But U.S. Circuit Judge Julie Rikelman scoffed at that notion, comparing it to a suggestion that it wouldn’t violate the First Amendment to prohibit newspaper publishers from buying ink.“It’s not evident to me” that the Second Amendment isn’t implicated, said Barron, a Barack Obama appointee.Fischer-Groban said the laws didn’t impair citizens’ gun rights, because there were 76,000 handgun sales in the state in 2024 and some 560 models available for sale. But Rikelman, a Joe Biden appointee, shot that argument down, too.“Would 100 models be enough?” she asked. “Or fifty? Or two?” She told Fischer-Groban to move on to the historical analysis.And it was here the judges appeared stumped.Early American laws required manufacturers to show their weapons weren’t defective, such that they might melt or explode when fired. Fischer-Groban said those laws were designed to promote safety, and they justified the newer Massachusetts laws that were also designed to promote safety.But the gun dealers’ lawyer, Will Bergstrom of Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C., argued there was a big difference between a government requiring guns function as intended and a government coming up with a long list of additional safety features and banning guns that don’t happen to have them.“There is no tradition in this country of states requiring manufacturers to make arms a certain way just for safety,” Bergstrom said.“At a high level of generality,” it’s still a safety issue, Rikelman observed.But that would allow a state to ban anything, Bergstrom replied: “You’re at way too high a level of generality.”Fischer-Groban argued new technology requires new restrictions.“Back in the day, there were few pistols. They were kept unloaded because gunpowder was corrosive,” so there was no need for a load indicator, she said. “These issues weren’t there at the founding."But Bergstrom countered that “new technology doesn’t change the fact that we need to be rigorous in our historical analysis.“There’s been no law up until this one that did anything like this in our country’s history,” he added. “It’s a historical aberration.”The judges acknowledged that, in colonial times, it would almost always have been obvious whether a gun was loaded, which made a load indicator unnecessary. “So, what are we supposed to do, analogically, if it’s a new concern?” Barron wondered out loud at the end of the debate. “What are we supposed to do?”U.S. Circuit Judge Gustavo Gelpí, a Biden appointee, rounded out the three-judge panel.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads