The AR-15 is not protected by the Second Amendment, according to a federal court ruling Friday. In his decision in Worman v. Baker, U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young declared, “Assault weapons and LCMs [large capacity magazines] are not within the scope of the personal right to ‘bear arms’ under the Second Amendment.” Furthermore, he argued, “Because the undisputed facts convincingly demonstrate AR-15s and LCMs are most useful in military service, they are beyond the scope of the Second Amendment … and may be banned.” He insisted, “The test is not the AR-15’s present day popularity but whether it is a weapon ‘most useful in military service.’” You know what else was “most useful in military service”? The single-shot musket, at the time the Bill of Rights was crafted. It’s pathetically laughable to assert that the Founders meant what Young contends. Quite the contrary, the usefulness and popularity of the AR-15 mean that it is the epitome of what the Founders intended to protect.

Moreover, Young even acknowledged the difference between the AR-15 and the M-16, if only to dismiss it: “The AR-15 design is almost identical to the M16, except for the mode of firing [emphasis added].” Young should have realized that semiautomatic vs. fully automatic makes all the difference. The fact that these two rifles look alike does not trump the fact that they function very differently. The deliberate leftist conflation of the two, simply due to some entirely cosmetic features, is solely for the purpose of undermining Second Amendment rights. We suggest Young take the time to learn the error of his ways.

Young concluded by boasting of his ruling, “Justice Scalia would be proud.” Like Scalia, Young is an appointee of Ronald Reagan, but Young’s claim is outrageous, and if Scalia were alive to correct him, he would hammer this mendacious twisting of his words.

As for Massachusetts’ law, bans on popular semiautomatic rifles with certain cosmetic features that have nothing to do with lethality are merely for show; they do not “save lives” as the state’s attorney general insisted after the ruling. Instead, they rob citizens of a tool useful in actually exercising their constitutional right.

Eventually, the Supreme Court is going to have to stop avoiding gun cases and settle this matter.