A voter-approved Oregon gun control law violates the state constitution, a judge ruled Tuesday, continuing to block it from taking effect and casting fresh doubt over the future of the embattled measure.
The law requires people to undergo a criminal background check and complete a gun safety training course in order to obtain a permit to buy a firearm. It also bans high-capacity magazines.
The plaintiffs in the federal case, which include the Oregon Firearms Federation, have appealed the ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case could potentially go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
That seems to conflict with Miller though? A short barrel shotgun apparently wasn’t standard military issue so it wasn’t legal for possession?
New precedent trumps old precedent. It’s why Brown v Board is the law of the land and Plessy v Ferguson isn’t. There (to my knowledge) hasn’t been a challenge to the NFA that’s reached the Supreme Court since that Caetano case in 2016 and the court hasn’t explicitly struck down the prior precedent of its legality, so it still stands based on the other points in the ruling. Even the current NFA-related cases against bump stock and pistol brace bans working through courts are based more on whether the ATF can consider them as NFA items rather than whether the NFA itself can be considered constitutional, so it’s likely to stick around.
There’s a lot of confusion over “legal”.
A short barrelled shotgun or short barrelled rifle can be legally owned, you just have to pay a tax stamp on it. $200 was a LOT of money when Miller passed, not so much these days.
That doesn’t even get into “Non-NFA Firearms” that are designed by the manufacturer to ride the line between legal and illegal.
For example… If you take a Mossberg 590 shotgun and chop the stock down to a pistol grip, and don’t pay the tax, that’s a felony.
If you take a Mossberg 590 and shorten the barrel too much without paying the tax stamp, that’s a felony.
The 590 Shockwave is a “Non-NFA firearm” that is perfectly legal without a tax stamp even though it has a pistol grip and a short barrel.
https://www.mossberg.com/590-shockwave-6-shot-50659.html
It’s legal because it was made this way, not modified to be this way and it fits precisely in the overall length definition.
If you were to remove the pistol grip and put on a shoulder stock? No tax stamp? Felony.