Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, would seem like a powerful argument for passing new laws to regulate firearms.
But the most likely source of immediate federal action on guns is not Congress. This is the Supreme Court, which is about to issue a potentially landmark decision that could expand the reach of the Second Amendment, putting some existing state and local gun safety laws in serious legal jeopardy.
That’s right: America’s notoriously weak gun laws may soon be even weaker.
The matter is called before the court New York State Rifle and Pistol Association vs. Bruen, Its subject is a State Law This requires people to obtain a permit to carry a gun in public. To obtain a permit, a person needs to present a reasonable, convincing argument for why they need a gun for self-defense.
A basic premise of the law is that carrying a firearm with too many people increases the likelihood of impulsive or accidental firing. But a few years ago, two New Yorkers challenged the law, claiming it violated the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to “have and bear arms.” His case made its way through the federal judiciary to the Supreme Court, which heard it november,
A decision is likely to come in the next few weeks, and any outcome is possible, including an opinion that would let the New York law uphold. But given the court’s six-member conservative majority and the duration of the questions, the judges asked during verbal reasoningMost experts expect a decision that supersedes the law.
At that point, the bigger question will be the underlying logic of the ruling and its implications for other gun restrictions, including uniform permit system Which are present in California, Massachusetts and other states which together account for about a quarter of the US population.
The decision to repeal the New York law would create a slew of challenges for other state laws as well. Those challenges will have a high probability of success, which will allow federal judges to hear their cases, and the once radical perspective that many of those judges have brought to the bench.
second amendment rewrite
As recently as the late 20th century, the prevailing view among judges and legal scholars held that the Second Amendment actually guaranteed states the right to maintain militias. The idea that the amendment recognized an individual’s right to own a gun, let alone the right to carry a gun, struck much of the legal establishment as absurd. In 1990, former Chief Justice Warren Berger famously called this notion a “fraud on the American public”.
But by that time, aggressive gun rights advocates were well on their way to destroying that consensus, thanks to a patient, scholarly determined campaign. reva seagull And Michael Waldman has since been documented in detail.
A key element of that campaign was to undercut the research of conservative scholars who favored more detailed readings of the Second Amendment. Another was support for Republican presidential candidates, who promised to appoint sympathetic judges—and Senate candidates, though most not entirely Republicans, who would vote to confirm them.
In 2008, that effort paid off when a conservative, Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court imposed a handgun ban in Washington, D.C., citing personal firearm ownership rights that the court had never recognized before. was not given.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the judgment, said the guarantee was there in the plain text of the Second Amendment, and was in line with the country’s history. Critics noted that Scalia was apparently less interested in the parts of the revision that talked about the militia – and called his reading of the history overly biased. But Scalia had the votes, and his idea won.
A caveat in that ruling was an allowance for firearms regulation, as long as the limits were reasonable and based in tradition. And this is the central issue in the New York case.
Challengers of the law say it does not meet those criteria, citing the discretion the system leaves to state officials, as well as challengers claiming that was the idea of ​​the country’s founders. Defenders of the New York law sharply disagree, noting that the ban on the right to carry firearms has a long history, extending to hundreds of years of old English laws that are the foundation of American legal philosophy today.
But what ultimately happens in a case may have less to do with the merits of the case and more to do with who is deciding. The challengers need five judges to vote in their own way. And with six conservatives in court — one in five who previously recognized the right to own a gun — their chances of success are high.
Rewriting America’s Gun Laws
If a majority decides to repeal the New York law, then challenge another, similar state laws will fill federal courts, which are now filled with conservative justices overly receptive to broad interpretations of the Second Amendment. Lawsuits against other gun regulations would likely begin as well, possibly challenging even well-known, widely accepted schemes such as the federal background system.
Given how aggressive some of the most recent Republican judicial appointees have been about ignoring precedent and adopting one-time conservative principles, it’s safe to assume that some of those lawsuits will be successful — as well as the Supreme New opportunities for the Court to consider new cases, and new opportunities to expand the reach of the Second Amendment.
By then, America will certainly have experienced many more shootings, in an epidemic of firearm violence that is uniquely American among peer nations. It’s a function of the fact that it’s so easy to get a gun here—and maybe soon, it’s so easy to carry one around, too.
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