Possession of a machinegun; 18 USC § 922(o); Second Amendment challenge to the statute; New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v Bruen; District of Columbia v Heller; Whether Hamblen v United States remains good law after Bruen; Application of the Heller/Bruen text-&-history test

The court held that defendant-Bridges’s conviction for possessing a machinegun was constitutional both on its face and as applied to him under Supreme Court and Sixth Circuit precedent, and that the statute “is consistent with our Nation’s historical tradition of prohibiting private possession of dangerous and unusual weapons.” Bridges was convicted of possessing a machinegun in violation of § 922(o). He argued that his conviction violated the Second Amendment, facially and as applied to him, under Bruen. Analyzing both of these challenges as one, the court held that they “fail together.” It found three cases were key – the Supreme Court’s decisions in Heller and Bruen, and the court’s decision in Hamblen, which was decided after Heller but before Bruen. Hamblen held “that the Second Amendment categorically does not protect the possession of ‘unregistered machine guns for personal use.’” Addressing whether Hamblen is binding after Bruen, the court rejected Bridges’s argument that Bruen required it to depart from Hamblen. “Hamblen straightforwardly applied Heller, and Bruen did nothing to displace those aspects of Heller on which Hamblen relied; Hamblen therefore remains good law after Bruen.” The court further concluded that even if Hamblen did “not control here, a fresh application of the Heller/Bruen text-and-history test yields the same result.” It explained that the Second Amendment’s plain text covered “Bridges’s possession of a machinegun, and ‘the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.’” Turning to the second Bruen step, it considered “whether the statute ‘is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.’” The court looked to Heller and concluded that “whether machineguns fall within the right’s historical scope turns on whether machineguns are ‘dangerous and unusual.’” The court found that they are dangerous because of the harm they can do without necessitating a reload. As to whether they are “unusual,” it considered machinegun-ownership data. It determined that “the relevant number excludes law-enforcement equipment” and unlawfully owned weapons. “The Amendment’s protection extends only to those weapons ‘typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.’” Machineguns are not typically used for personal protection, and given their “lack of connection to lawful purposes, they are ‘unusual’ under Heller.” Affirmed.