Look, I've been selling self-defense tools for over two decades, and I still can't legally sell a stun gun to a customer walking through my door in New York City. That's not because stun guns are dangerous — it's because Big Brother decided regular folks can't be trusted with them.
The Supreme Court just stepped in to shake things up. They ordered New York City to defend its stun gun ban in Calce v. New York City, a case that gun rights groups are calling "Caetano 2.0" for good reason. Back in Caetano v. Massachusetts, the High Court unanimously ruled that stun guns ARE protected by the Second Amendment. Period. Full stop. So how is New York City still getting away with this?
Here's the dirty trick the Second Circuit pulled: instead of actually addressing whether stun guns deserve constitutional protection, they put the burden on the plaintiffs to prove these devices are "in common use." That's backwards, folks. Under Bruen, once the Second Amendment's plain text covers an arm, the government should have to justify the restriction using historical tradition — not the other way around.
What's really infuriating is the constitutional catch-22 embedded in this reasoning. The government bans an arm, fewer people own it, and then the government argues that the lack of ownership proves the arm was never protected. That's intellectually dishonest, and the Supreme Court seems to smell it.
The case even has a human face. One plaintiff, Amanda Kennedy, used a stun gun to scare off an attacker without firing a shot — and then got charged by police for possessing the very tool that saved her. New York City exempts its own police from the ban but throws ordinary citizens in the clink. That's not public safety; that's tyranny with a badge.
This case matters beyond stun guns. The same burden-shifting dispute shows up in challenges to semiautomatic rifles. If courts can demand "proof of popularity" before constitutional protection kicks in, politicians will just keep banning new arms before anyone can own them.
The Court's order to hear arguments doesn't guarantee victory, but it does mean this constitutional mess gets the review it deserves.