Would Supreme Court Protect Your Lightsaber In A Time Far, Far Away?
The Supreme Court is expected to rule in Viramontes v. Cook County by June 2027, but the case could end up protecting more than modern semiautomatic firearms.
Harold Hutchison·Oct 13, 2026·6 min read
💻Technology
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The Supreme Court is expected to rule in Viramontes v. Cook County by June 2027, but the case could end up protecting more than modern semiautomatic firearms.
The justices agreed on June 30 to hear the case, a Second Amendment challenge to the Illinois locality’s ban on modern semiautomatic firearms, which supporters of banning the so-called “assault weapons” claim were never foreseen by the Founding Fathers. The Daily Caller News Foundation asked Second Amendment legal experts whether advanced 💻Technology in the form of science-fiction weapons like the lightsaber wielded by Luke Skywalker or the phaser fired by Captain Kirk could be protected by the Second Amendment.
“The Supreme Court has explained that the history and tradition of gun regulation at the time of the founding informs the principles of what we understand the right to protect,” Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) Senior Director of Litigation Bill Sack told the DCNF. “So theoretically, in a galaxy far, far away, if under the jurisdiction of our Constitution, and if phasers and lightsabers were commonly owned for lawful purposes, then absolutely, they too would be protected.”
One case that could play an outsized role in Viramontes is Caetano v. Massachusetts, a 2016 case in which the Supreme Court issued an unsigned opinion that overturned the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the state’s ban on stun guns.
“The court explained that stun guns are not protected because they ‘were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment,’” the unsigned opinion says. “This is inconsistent with Heller’s clear statement that the Second Amendment ‘extends . . . to . . . arms . . . that were not in existence at the time of the founding.’”
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Would Supreme Court Protect Your Lightsaber In A Time Far, Far Away? — IJR
Benjamin Franklin, who signed both the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, was renowned as an inventor, having created the Franklin stove and bifocal lenses for glasses. Franklin also expressed excitement at the thought of technological innovations.
“Furnish’d as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice Instruments and the Spirit of Experiment, the Progress of human Knowledge will be rapid, and Discoveries made of which we have at present no Conception,” Franklin wrote in a 1783 letter to Sir Joseph Banks. “I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the Happiness of knowing what will be known 100 Years hence.”
CATO Senior Vice President for Legal Studies Clark Neily said that the Caetano ruling would likely protect future innovations in 💻Technology – even if they were versions of sci-fi weapons, while the court’s past Second Amendment jurisprudence would “evolve.”
“What if it turns out to be the case that some new class of weapon is actually socially optimal in the sense of maybe self-defense in the sense that it is a less than lethal weapon, like a weapon that can sort of discharge some sort of energy, like a sound wave or some other form of non-lethal energy that can incapacitate an attacker reliably without killing them?” Neily said. “That would seem to be something we would want people to be able to have as an alternative to a firearm. And the Caetano decision that we talked about a few minutes ago from 2016 would seem to at least raise the possibility that a new weapon like that would be protected by the Second Amendment, even though it wouldn’t seem on its face to pass the test that it needs to be not unusual. I mean, it’s a double negative, but right, it needs to be common in order to be outside of this sort of dangerous and unusual exception.”
“But if it’s brand new, then presumably there’ll be at least some period of time where it’s not common, it’s not in common use. And so it would seem more amenable to regulation or even being banned under the Supreme Court’s stated test,” Neily continued. “I would expect that test to evolve. I would expect that test to be updated so as to take into account the very real possibility that new technologies, new types of weapons are not sort of born without the protection of the Second Amendment simply because they are new.”
SAF Director of Legal Research and Education Konstadinos Moros concurred, noting that the development of new 💻Technology highlighted a need to clarify the Second Amendment’s protections.
“If a lightsaber were invented today, and there was one of them, you know, maybe a government would say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like this is really dangerous, Moros told the DCNF. “So, yeah, let’s ban this. So maybe they ban before it ever becomes common, and that’s a whole problem with the whole common use framework.”
“We’ll have to await a future case someday where some government, some state government, whatever it is, ban some new type of gun or new type of weapon before it can become popular, and then we have to come to court and say, the common use doctrine never really considered this possibility, you know, where this would have been popular had they not banned it,” Moros added later.
Thomas Jefferson also expressed an awareness of innovation a letter he sent while serving as vice president in 1799.
“It is impossible for a man who takes a survey of what is already known, not to see what an immensity in every branch of science yet remains to be discovered, & that too of articles to which our faculties seem adequate,” Jefferson wrote to William G. Munford.
In an 1818 letter to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jefferson expressed similar eagerness for science and discoveries, which he believed would be coming.
“When I contemplate the immense advances in science, and discoveries in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation,” Jefferson wrote.
“The fact is that one new idea leads to another, that to a 3d and so on thro’ a course of time, until some one, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention,” Jefferson added.
During Jefferson’s presidential administration, the Lewis and Clark Expedition took along an air gun that had a 22-shot magazine and operated as a repeater.
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