Caetano v. Massachusetts (577 U.S. 411)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 21, 2016 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 577 U.S. 411 · 136 S. Ct. 1027
- Decided
- March 21, 2016
- Term
- October Term 2015
- Vote
- 8–0
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Cite as: 577 U. S. ____ (2016) 1 Per Curiam SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES JAIME CAETANO v. MASSACHUSETTS ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS No. 14–10078. Decided March 21, 2016 PER CURIAM. The Court has held that “the Second Amendment ex- tends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570 , 582 (2008), and that this “Second Amend- ment right is fully applicable to the States,” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742 , 750 (2010). In this case, the Su- preme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massa- chusetts law prohibiting the possession of stun guns after examining “whether a stun gun is the type of weapon contemplated by Congress in 1789 as being protected by the Second Amendment.” 470 Mass. 774 , 777, 26 N. E. 3d 688 , 691 (2015). The court offered three explanations to support its holding that the Second Amendment does not extend to stun guns. First, the court explained that stun guns are not protected because they “were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment.” Id., at 781 , 26 N. E. 3d, at 693. This is inconsistent with Heller’s clear statement that the Second Amendment “extends . . . to . . . arms . . . that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”…
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