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8 ConLawNOW 1 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/akjopal8 and id is 1 raw text is: ASSAULT WEAPON BANS: CAN THEY SURVIVE RATIONAL BASIS SCRUTINY? Clayton E. Cramer* In the last two decades, legislatures and courts have been increasingly willing to argue that a certain class of firearms termed assault weapons are not protected by the Second Amendment, and may be regulated or banned even though functionally identical firearms are not generally subject to such laws. The United States Supreme Court has long recognized that distinctions in laws must be rationally related to a legitimate state interest.' Do assault weapons bans meet this standard, or are they a panic driven response to the fear of gang violence and random mass murder? I. WHAT IS AN ASSAULT WEAPON? Starting in 1989, with the passage of California's Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act (AWCA),2 a new term has entered the American legal vocabulary: assault weapon (AW). What is it? * Adjunct History Faculty, College of Western Idaho. Mr. Cramer is the author of CONCEALED WEAPON LAWs OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC: DUELING, SOUTHERN VIOLENCE, AND MORAL REFORM (1999) (cited by Justice Breyer dissenting inMcDonaldv. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742,933 (2010)), and ARMED AMERICA: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF How AND WHY GUNs BECAME As AMERICAN As APPLE PIE (2006), and co-author of, among other articles, Clayton E. Cramer & Joseph Edward Olson, What Did Bear Arms Mean in the Second Amendment?, 6 GEO. J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 511 (2008) (cited by Justice Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 588 (2008)), and Clayton E. Cramer, Nicholas J. Johnson & George A. Mocsary, This Right is Not Allowed by Governments that Are Afraid of the People: The Public Meaning of the Second Amendment When the Fourteenth Amendment Was Ratified, 17 GEO.MASON L. REV. 823 (2010) (cited by Justice Alito in McDonald, 561 U.S. at 773 n.21, 776 n.25, 780). Funding for this research was provided by Firearms Policy Coalition and The Calguns Foundation. 1. Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 440 (1985) (The general rule is that legislation is presumed to be valid and will be sustained if the classification drawn by the statute is rationally related to a legitimate state interest.). 2. Carl Ingram, Assault Gun Ban Wins Final Vote: Deukmejian's Promised Approval Would Make It 1st Such U.S. Law, L.A. TIMES, May 19, 1989, http://articles.latimes.com/1989-05- 19/news/mn-112_1_assault-weapons-ban-military-style-assault-types-of-semiautomatic-rifles/2 (last accessed Feb. 27, 2016). 1

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