The world turned upside-down:
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of San Francisco reversed the conviction, ruling that the congressional ban does not apply to homemade machine guns and their parts because they were never in the stream of commerce.
The court ruled that there was neither a transfer nor sale of the weapons or their parts, so Congress did not have the power under the Commerce Clause to regulate homemade guns crafted from scratch.
Robert Stewart was sentenced to five years imprisonment for being a felon in possession of firearms and of possessing illegal machine guns last year.
His attorney, Thomas Haney of Phoenix, said the decision doesn’t mean much for his client or for the gun movement. Few people have the skills to build a weapon from scratch, as Stewart did, Haney said.
Perhaps not (yet) — but that the Notorious Ninth reads the Commerce Clause narrowly, in a gun case of all things, is big news. (Link from Rational Review News Digest)
Punchline:
Stewart, meanwhile, faces about a 20-year sentence next week after being convicted this summer of soliciting a fellow prisoner at the Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix to kill U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver, the judge who last year sentenced him to five years on the weapons violations.
Eugene Volokh weighs in. Brett Thomas and Larry Solum debate the consequences for amateur marijuana growers.