Second Amendment Case Moves Forward in Northern Mariana Islands

The defendant in the second amendment case in the Northern Mariana Islands anticipates that the law will be ruled unconstitutional.  From mvariety.com:

District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona will preside over a hearing for the motion for summary judgment on March 5, 2015.

Anticipating an unfavorable ruling from the federal court, Deleon Guerrero and Zarones have asked the Legislature to act “swiftly without hesitation” in passing an alternative gun control law.

The Northern Mariana Islands (NMI) have one of the most restrictive gun control laws of any jurisdiction in the territories of the United States.  Only the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa have laws that might be considered as strict. 

The NMI has not had a problem with guns being used in crime, even when guns were completely unregulated, before 1972.   The gun ban was purely "precautionary" based on the unfounded theory that guns cause crime.    The notion was popular at the time; the 1968 federal gun control act had been passed four years earlier.   Many liberal academics had held that the second amendment of the constitution did not apply to individuals; a theory first put forward by the Kansas Supreme Court in 1905, and dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Heller decision 103 years later in 2008.

The desire to keep restrictive gun laws in the NMI seems outdated, the theories that it was based on have been discredited.

But legislatures have passed numerous laws based on outdated theories, simply on the premise that passing laws demonstrates that they are "doing something", or on paternalistic attitudes that people are incapable of acting in their own interests.  It remains to be seen if the legislature in the NMI will pass another "precautionary" law.

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