Caetano v. Massachusetts
The Supreme Court threw out a Massachusetts high court ruling that upheld a total ban on stun guns, saying each of the three reasons the state court gave for excluding stun guns from Second Amendment protection conflicted with the Court's earlier decisions in Heller and McDonald.
The case is sent back to the Massachusetts court to reconsider under the correct legal standard, but the per curiam order does not itself decide whether stun gun bans are unconstitutional.
“For these three reasons, the explanation the Massachusetts court offered for upholding the law contradicts this Court's precedent.”
The Court's summary conclusion that all three of the state court's justifications for the stun gun ban were flawed.
How it got here: A Massachusetts trial court convicted Caetano; the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, and she asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Jaime Caetano, a domestic violence survivor, obtained a stun gun from a friend to protect herself after restraining orders failed to stop her abusive ex-boyfriend. She later used it to scare him off. Police in Massachusetts subsequently found the stun gun in her purse during an unrelated shoplifting investigation and charged her under a state law that completely banned possessing such weapons.
The question before the Court
Can a state completely ban stun guns just because they didn't exist when the Second Amendment was written in 1789?
Why it matters
The ruling is a reminder to lower courts nationwide that they cannot exclude modern weapons like stun guns from Second Amendment coverage simply because they're new inventions, weren't around in 1789, or aren't used by the military. States that ban stun guns and similar non-lethal self-defense devices will need to justify those bans under the correct constitutional test, potentially affecting people who prefer non-lethal self-defense options.
What changes now
The case returns to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which must reconsider Caetano's Second Amendment claim without relying on the three flawed rationales the Supreme Court identified. This is not a final merits ruling on whether stun gun bans are unconstitutional—the Court did not decide that question itself, leaving it for the lower court to address using the corrected legal framework.
What this does not decide
The per curiam opinion does not decide whether Massachusetts's stun gun ban is actually unconstitutional or whether stun guns are constitutionally protected arms. It only holds that the state court's specific reasons for rejecting protection were legally wrong, leaving the ultimate question for reconsideration below.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Alito
Justice Alito agreed the judgment should be vacated but argued the Court should have gone further and definitively ruled the ban unconstitutional. He detailed Caetano's use of the stun gun against her abuser, argued stun guns are commonly possessed for lawful self-defense today, rejected the 'dangerous and unusual' rationale on both prongs, and criticized the Court's 'grudging' per curiam for merely sending the case back rather than deciding it.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied its rule from Heller that the Second Amendment covers all bearable weapons, even ones that didn't exist when the amendment was adopted in 1789, not just weapons from the founding era.
- It found the Massachusetts court's first reason for excluding stun guns—that they weren't 'in common use' in 1789—directly contradicted that rule, since Heller rejected treating 1789 existence as the test for protection.
- It found the state court's second reason—that stun guns are 'unusual' because they are a modern invention—collapsed into the same error, since 'unusual' was equated with 'not common in 1789' rather than assessed by whether the weapon is commonly used by law-abiding citizens today.
- It found the state court's third reason—that stun guns aren't readily adaptable to military use—also conflicted with Heller, which had already rejected the idea that only weapons useful in warfare are protected by the Second Amendment.
- Because all three of the lower court's stated grounds for denying Second Amendment protection to stun guns were inconsistent with the Court's precedent, the Court concluded the decision below could not stand as written.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms District of Columbia v. Heller (554 U.S. 570)
The Court relies on Heller's rule that the Second Amendment covers weapons not in existence at the founding.
Distinguishes United States v. Miller (307 U.S. 174)
The Court clarifies Miller's 'common use' language does not mean only 1789-era weapons are protected.