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ARTICLE · 16 MAY 2016

The Right To Bear… Stun Guns: Second Amendment Protections Expanded?

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The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court contended that the Second Amendment did not apply to stun guns for three reasons.

United StatesGovernment, Public Sector
Matthew Barley
Matthew Barley
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The State of Massachusetts prohibits the possession of any "portable device or weapon from which an electrical current, impulse, wave or beam may be directed, which current impulse, wave or beam is designed to incapacitate temporarily, injure or kill."  Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 140 §131J (2014). In September of 2011, Jaime Caetano was stopped by police and she consented to a search of her purse.  During that search, police discovered a stun gun, which Caetano had borrowed from a friend for protection against an abusive boyfriend.

Caetano was arrested, and despite moving to dismiss the charge on Second Amendment grounds, she was tried and convicted of possessing the stun gun.  On appeal, the United States Supreme Court issued a per curiam opinion firmly vacating the judgment against Caetano and remanding the case back to the trial court for retrial consistent with the Supreme Court's opinion.  Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U.S. ___ (2016).

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