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. Ed, a 2016 James Wilson Fellow, is a partner at Holtzman Vogel. Ed has focused the bulk of his career on appellate and constitutional litigation, as well as critical motions practice. His appellate experience began, first, as a law clerk for the Judge Edward Prado of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and it continued as a law clerk for the Judge Karen Henderson of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He has since served as the Chief Deputy Solicitor General for the State of Florida (the number two appellate litigator or the State) and the General Counsel to the West Virginia Attorney General.

Hanson v. D.C. appellate opinion

Hadley Arkes on D.C. v. Heller in First Things