If you want to use a taser, join the police department

These plaintiffs challenge a New York City law that makes it illegal to possess electronic weapons, such as stun guns and tasers. Cases like this are happening because the Supreme Court held in 2008 that the Second Amendment provides for an individual right of gun ownership, though the Court in 2022 clarified that ruling in stating that some gun laws are legal if they regulate certain weapons in a manner resembling the gun laws when the Constitution was enacted in the eighteenth century. 

The case is Calce v. Tisch, a summary order issued on April 13. The Second Amendment Foundation is among the plaintiffs. This case actually implicates a different component of the 2022 ruling, known as the Bruen case. Our issue is whether the weapons in issue are in "common use today for self-defense and whether the conduct at issue implicates the right to armed self-defense." This may be an easy issue for run o' the mill guns and other firearms, but what about electronic weapons and tasers? Are they in common use today? The plaintiffs have not proven their case.

The Court of Appeals (Parker, Merriam and Lohier) says plaintiffs do not have a case. On the summary judgment motion, they were supposed to introduce admissible evidence to show these weapons are in common use. But, says the Court of Appeals, "Instead of introducing the required evidence before the trial court, Plaintiffs cited a slew of non-binding cases and a concurrence by Justice Alito, which cites a Michigan Court of Appeals decision relying on a 2009 law review article, for the proposition that 'stun guns are common.'" 

But, the Second Circuit states, "for the first time on appeal, Plaintiffs cite additional materials that were not introduced below, including newspaper articles from the 1980s, a New York Post article, and a Congressional Research Service Report that references a large increase in civilian purchases of stun guns from 2019 to 2020. They failed to introduce these materials in the district court and we decline to consider them now. The materials they do cite are miscellaneous bits and pieces insufficient to establish that stun guns and tasers are in common use for lawful purposes."