The Supreme Court's Bruen decision of 2022 was a monumental victory for gun rights and will continue to prove consequential in rolling back unconstitutional violations of the Second Amendment for years if not decades to come.

Just this week, a federal judge in Kansas cited Bruen and its "historical analogue" requirement in dismissing machinegun possession charges against an individual, according to Breitbart.

Unsurprisingly, anti-Second Amendment gun control groups, such as Everytown for Gun Safety, immediately expressed their outrage over the ruling and decried the judge's decision that faithfully applied the high court's precedent.

Machineguns covered by Second Amendment, judge rules

The case of United States v. Morgan is centered on a Kansas resident named Tamori Morgan who was busted for merely possessing a fully automatic AR-15-style rifle as well as a so-called "Glock switch" that renders a Glock handgun capable of automatic fire.

Morgan was criminally charged with two violations of 18 U.S.C. §922(o), which with some exceptions makes it generally "unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machinegun" -- charges that he urged the court to dismiss as violations of his Second Amendment-protected rights to keep and bear arms.

In a 10-page order, U.S. District Judge John Broomes wrote, "The court finds that the Second Amendment applies to the weapons charged because they are 'bearable arms' within the original meaning of the amendment. The court further finds that the government has failed to establish that this nation’s history of gun regulation justifies the application of 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) to Defendant. The court therefore grants the motion to dismiss."

"The Supreme Court has indicated that the Bruen analysis is not merely a suggestion"

In his analysis, Judge Broomes quickly dispatched with the first of Bruen's two-step test in determining that the weapons at issue constituted "bearable arms" that are presumptively covered by the Second Amendment, which leads to the second step -- finding similar laws in early U.S. history that support the current prohibition.

On that step, the government failed, as prosecutors only provided two purported examples -- one an English common law that dates back to medieval England and the second a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling from 1824 -- neither of which were applicable because both dealt with carrying weapons in public in an aggressive or threatening manner while the law in question deals only with possession.

Furthermore, the judge knocked down the government's ancillary argument that machineguns are particularly "unusual" in society by pointing out that there are nearly three-quarters of a million legally registered machineguns across the country and that federal law doesn't completely ban all machineguns but rather merely regulates their possession.

"To summarize, in this case, the government has not met its burden under Bruen and Rahimi to demonstrate through historical analogs that regulation of the weapons at issue in this case are consistent with the nation’s history of firearms regulation," Broomes wrote. "Indeed, the government has barely tried to meet that burden. And the Supreme Court has indicated that the Bruen analysis is not merely a suggestion."

The judge further observed that the 10th Circuit Court recently "side-stepped" the Bruen requirements in a case known as Vincent v. Garland only to have that decision vacated and remanded by the Supreme Court, and added, "The court interprets that as indicating that the Supreme Court means what it says: the constitutionality of laws regulating the possession of firearms under the Second Amendment must be evaluated under the Bruen framework."

Gun control group is "shocked and dismayed" by judge's "appalling" ruling

Of course, the anti-gun rights group Everytown was quick to condemn the "extreme and reckless" decision from the "Trump-appointee" judge that, in essence, opens the door for the federal regulations on machine guns to be repealed as unconstitutional.

Janet Carter, Everytown's senior director of issues and appeals, said in a statement, "It’s appalling that the District Court would so brazenly put the deadly agenda of the gun lobby over the safety of Kansans. We are shocked and dismayed by this decision."

"Machine guns -- guns capable of automatic firing -- have been tightly regulated under federal law since the 1930s. The laws banning them are not only constitutional, but crucial to public safety," she added. "These weapons of war, capable of causing irreparable harm to countless innocent people, have no place in our communities."