Gun Control Advocate
Misrepresents Massachusetts
Court Decision on Common Rifles
By Dean Weingarten. July 22nd, 2018
Original Source
In an interview in Mother Jones, a leading gun control advocate, Avery Gardner, makes the following claims. From motherjones.com:
AG: There's a case in Massachusetts that raises this exact issue. Worman v. Baker was decided in April by Judge William Young. It's a 47-page opinion that really goes into this question of "in common use at the time" and said that's the standard. Judge Young quotes Scalia's opinion in Heller all the way through it and then upholds the Massachusetts law banning assault weapons. That case is going to be appealed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The Second, Fourth, Seventh, and the DC Circuit have all upheld assault weapons ban, so I predict the First Circuit will, too, but somebody's going to appeal that to the Supreme Court, and we will have this discussion about what does "in common use at the time" mean? I think it's likely that Judge Kavanaugh will be Justice Kavanaugh by then. And we know what he thinks because he already told us--he wrote that dissent in the DC case.
Avery Gardner (AG) misstates what Judge William Young writes in his opinion. In Worman v. Baker, Judge Young does not rely on the "in common use at the time" argument. He instead makes the claim that AR15 rifles are "most useful in military service", and therefore are not covered by the second Amendment.
That claim turns the 1939 Miller decision on its head. He bases his claim on Justice's Scalia's words that the Heller decision does not invalidate the federal regulation of full auto firearms such as machine guns.
Judge Williams pointedly rejects the "in common use" argument, stating that because AR15 type rifles have military purposes, they fall completely outside the scope of the Second Amendment, whether they are in common use or not.
....... 
Anti-gun judges often seem to like to place their own interpretation on the Second Amendment in order to dilute it to suit their views. The old arguments concerning "common use at the time" when the 2A was written, and, exclusions based on military type weapons continue to be arguments towards furthering 'gun control'. The individual right argument remains central even today but various states have seen fit to legislate to fight that, as well as restricting numerous aspects of gun ownership.
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