As-applied Second Amendment challenge to 18 USC § 922(o) (prohibiting the transfer or possession of machineguns); New York State Pistol & Rifle Ass’n, Inc v Bruen; United States v Bridges; Whether Hamblen v United States remains good law; District of Columbia v Heller

The court held that § 922(o), which prohibits the transfer or possession of machineguns, does not violate the Second Amendment as applied to defendant-Brown under Bruen and Sixth Circuit precedent. Brown challenged his conviction for possessing a machinegun, arguing that it violated the Second Amendment as applied to him. The court explained that shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller, the court in Hamblen rejected a Second Amendment challenge to § 922(o). Brown contended that Hamblen was no longer good law in light of Bruen. But the Sixth Circuit recently rejected that argument in Bridges. Hamblen relied on Heller’s statement that “‘the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.’” The court found that Brown misread “both Bruen and Heller. The Supreme Court in Bruen ‘did not call Heller into question; to the contrary, Bruen was an unqualified endorsement of Heller.’” Rather, it “overturned only those post-Heller decisions that ‘had misapplied Heller by erroneously adding a means-end-scrutiny step to Heller’s text-and-history standard.’ . . . Any ‘pre-Bruen case[] that did not wrongfully apply means-end scrutiny remain[s] binding.’ . . . Hamblen did not apply means-end scrutiny.” Thus, Brown’s § 922(o) challenge failed “as a matter of circuit precedent.” Affirmed.