Last week, a federal district court ruled that key provisions of the National Firearms Act, including the registration scheme for suppressors and short-barreled rifles and shotguns, are unconstitutional. A new blog post from Clark Neily, senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute, details how this decision fits into a broader pattern of rulings that protect the Second Amendment right of Americans, writing in part:

Last week’s Silencer Shop decision fits a broader pattern I flagged in a letter to the Washington Post regarding Virginia’s ban on AR-style rifles: the Supreme Court has made increasingly clear that it will no longer treat the Second Amendment as a second-class right. Last term alone produced two notable examples of that trend — one decision striking down a Hawaii law designed to frustrate the constitutionally protected right to carry a concealed weapon, and another reversing a criminal conviction for possessing a firearm while being an unlawful user of a controlled substance (in that case, cannabis).

Unlike Silencer Shop, neither of those decisions involved the enumerated-powers doctrine; they were Second Amendment cases straight up. But they reflect the same dynamic increasingly evident in gun cases: a properly engaged judiciary that is less willing to rubber-stamp firearms restrictions and increasingly inclined to ask hard questions about the source and limits of government power.

To speak with Clark Neily, contact Cato PR at pr@​cato.​org.