A Right to Keep and Carry Does Not Create a Right to Purchase Firearms

 

Beckwith v. Frey, No. 25-1160 (1st Cir. 2026) pp. 7-8 uses means testing approach based on homicide and suicide rates purportedly reduced by waiting periods. Concerning persons at risk of domestic violence during the waiting period:

A representative of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence ("the Coalition") also submitted a statement that domestic violence advocates advise victims not to obtain a firearm as part of their safety plans because, statistically, victims are more likely to have the firearm used against them than to make helpful use of it during a confrontation.  The Coalition's representative also opined that victims who believe firearms are necessary for their immediate safety would not be harmed by the Act because the Coalition offers services designed to keep victims safe during the seventy-two-hour waiting period. 

No evidence presented that domestic victims are at greater risk even if it were true that gun owners in general are at higher risk. The claim that gun owners are more at risk of their guns being used against them is based on a study in King Co., Washington, that found that owning a dog or renting was even a higher risk factor than owning a gun. The study looked only deaths by gun, not if the gun used was owned by the dead person. That people who die by gun might be drug dealers or other low-lifes seems not to have been considered.

I am also pleased to learn that the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence is able to provide protection for domestic violence victims more effectively than the police.

On pp. 12-13:

To support the threshold contention that the district court should have stopped at step one of Bruen, the Attorney General argues that the Act does not curtail conduct covered by the Second Amendment's plain text and therefore presumptively does not violate the Amendment.  He contends the Amendment literally "says nothing about any right to purchase or otherwise acquire arms, much less to do so immediately."  Thus, he says the Act does not infringe the right to "keep" and "bear" arms because purchasing and acquiring firearms are materially distinct from, and necessarily antecedent to, possessing and carrying them....

The four modern Supreme Court cases interpreting the Second Amendment do not provide clear guidance for resolving this dispute because none of them deal with the sort of regulatory regime we consider here.

So the freedom of the press does not include the right to obtain a printing press or computer printer.