Professor Jacob Charles Quoted in "The Major Tests US Gun Control Activists Face in 2024" -- The Guardian

Professor Jacob D. Charles is quoted in the Guardian article, "The Major Tests US Gun Control Activists Face in 2024." The article considers recent state and federal legislative efforts to address gun violence, as well as the Supreme Court's next major second amendment decision in United States v. Rahimi.

Excerpt from "The Major Tests US Gun Control Activists Face in 2024"

The Rahimi ruling may also help clarify lower courts’ apparent confusion over applying the Bruen test. Thus far, courts have reached conflicting decisions over how to interpret the “historical tradition” of gun laws, said Jacob Charles, a professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and a constitutional scholar focusing on the second amendment.

“I certainly think that confusion is only growing,” Charles said. “We see circuit courts even disagree with one another and are kind of all over the place, the same way that the district courts have been. So I don’t think we’re having any more guidance until the [supreme] court weighs in more.”

During the oral arguments, some of the court’s conservative justices appeared skeptical of the fifth circuit’s decision, seemingly hesitant to stretch gun rights to the point of protecting alleged domestic abusers. Even if the supreme court rules against Rahimi, the decision will probably not mark a sea change in conservative justices’ overall approach to the second amendment. Charles, who filed an amicus brief in the Rahimi case, suggested the justices may issue a narrow ruling that upholds the law regarding domestic violence protection orders but leaves the Bruen test intact.

“That will still leave lots of other cases, like assault weapons bans, outside the scope of this new kind of revisionary guidance,” Charles said.

The complete article may be found at The Guardian