James Wilson Institute Podcast

We are excited to be dive into Second Amendment jurisprudence and the Natural Right to Self Defense. Our entry into that topic is collection of opinions in Hanson v. United States from a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from October 29, 2024. In that case, the majority upheld the District’s ban on the possession and sale of what it called “extra-large capacity magazines." The panel ruled the city’s ten-round limit for magazines fit within the nation’s historical tradition of regulating “particularly dangerous weapons” and those “capable of unprecedented lethality,” even though there weren’t similar bans when the Second Amendment was ratified. A dissenting opinion held that “Magazines holding more than ten rounds of ammunition are arms in common use for lawful purposes. Therefore, the government cannot ban them.” Joining us on the episode is the lawyer who delivered theoral argument and represented Mr. Hanson and other plaintiffs at the D.C. Circuit, Edward “Ed” Wenger.