Ruling in US v. Castleman

Dave Hardy is reporting that the Supreme Court has handed down a decision in US v. Castleman. I’d note that this isn’t a Second Amendment case, but rather one of statutory interpretation, regarding the extent of force necessary to trigger the Lautenberg Amendment prohibition. The case was unanimous in outcome, in so far as the conviction was upheld. But the court split on how broad “physical force” was, with the majority agreeing it matched the common law definition of force. So a wife poking at a husband in a heated argument would be sufficient for Lautenberg to Apply. Scalia concurred, but only on narrower grounds, suggesting it had to at least be enough force to at least have the potential of causing injury. Alito and Thomas concurred, and but noted disagreement with the holding in the previous Johnson case, which would seem to be at odds with this holding.

As I said, the Second Amendment wasn’t raised by Castleman, this was a straight up case of statutory interpretation, so I wouldn’t read the tea leaves too much over this one in regards to the future of Second Amendment law.