2nd Amendment-

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Patrick Atkinson v. Merrick B. Garland

Case No.: 22-1557

Officials: Sykes, Chief Judge, and Wood and Scudder, Circuit Judges.

Focus: 2^nd Amendment-

This is a Second Amendment challenge to the federal felon-in-possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). The appeal is in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). That development is significant because Bruen announced a new framework for analyzing restrictions on the possession of firearms. No longer, the Supreme Court made clear, can lower courts balance interests— of an individual’s right to possess a firearm and the state’s commitment to promoting personal or public safety—to resolve the constitutionality of the challenged restriction. The new approach anchors itself exclusively in the Second Amendment’s text and the pertinent history of firearms regulation, with the government bearing the burden of “affirmatively prov[ing] that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.” Id. at 2127.

The Seventh Circuit remanded to allow the district court to undertake the Bruen analysis. The court explained the parties may be unable altogether to find answers to certain questions, may find incomplete information in response to others, and perhaps in some instances, may identify substantial historical information pertinent to one or another dimension of the required inquiry.

Remanded and affirmed.

Decided 06/20/23

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