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Category Archives: Second Amendment

FISA and the Second Amendment: Gun Owners Beware – RealClearPolicy

Posted: February 3, 2024 at 1:14 pm

FISA and the Second Amendment: Gun Owners Beware  RealClearPolicy

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Second Amendment protects the rest | Commentary | norfolkdailynews.com – Norfolk Daily News

Posted: at 1:13 pm

Let me take a moment to educate the masses, so to speak not to exclude constitutionalists who spend the vast majority of their time analyzing and dissecting each word and phrase in every amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

There exists a formal and dignified principle that, although unstated, is nevertheless etched in stone. Its non-negotiable. Its cold-blooded, hard-boiled fact. The Second Amendment protects all the rest.

Write that on the bedroom mirror so its the first thing you see when you get out of bed in the morning. Attach it to the door of the refrigerator within which is stored the nutrients nutrients that not only nourish your body but also give you the ability to exercise your mind. Nail it to the blackboard (OK, traditionalist I am) in the classroom that your kids attend so that no socialist-indoctrinated chowderhead can erase it and replace it with some sort of Mandan manifesto hogwash.

Understand, please, that once the Second Amendment is toast (done and dusted, to cite an old Scottish clich) and your right to possess and use firearms is effectively gone, the United States spontaneously becomes Cuba or North Korea or Venezuela or China or Argentina or Australia or Canada? OK, omit the last one, although the tyrannical Trudeau delights in shoving his weight around clamping down on freedoms once naturally assumed by Canadians.

No, I dont claim to be an oracle in any sense, able to see into the future and predict the unraveling of events. That is risky business. But, when my wife said to me, Congratulations, you were certainly right about that, her tone reflected a hint of disappointment that precluded my taking her comment as praise. Her reference, incidentally, was to my prediction that the $80 billion in weaponry left in Afghanistan would end up being used against us perhaps in the Middle East.

Despite claims to the contrary by Biden administration officials, including Jake Sullivan (who knows less about foreign policy than does your average CNN or MSNBC pundit) and John Kirby (who manages to come up with a feeble excuse for every boneheaded decision the Biden crew makes), documentation proves that Hamas gunmen had access to that very arsenal. Anyone who is surprised about that result is much too stupid to deserve a cabinet position in the US military.

But, unabashed ignorance appears in vogue nowadays especially on college and university campuses where liberal professors have corrupted the minds of helpless students whose (im)moral compass knows not which way to turn. The rising tide of anti-semitism (taking the side of terrorists who delight in raping women, burning people alive, and beheading mere children) should stand as a clarifying moment for the country. Its a sign of sheer irrationality. Still, why expect anything different given evidence that recent graduates cant read (beyond fifth-grade level), cant write (aside from crude text messages), cant add (absent computer assistance), and cant subtract (5 - 2 = 4)? Critical thinking skills? In your dreams.

Yes, the rot that defines higher education has been made possible by Harvard-type elites and corporate CEOs (Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, etc.) who are complicit in its destruction (financial contributions and woke foolishness run amok). Public institutions K-12 are failing, also evidenced by poor performance (near the bottom) in key subject areas compared to other industrialized nations ... which may have something to do with the prolonged disinvestment in history and civics education (averaging $0.05 per pupil).

Frankly, what I find most incredibly shameful and alarming is this. At a time when politics (and politicians?) are more divisive than ever, when America is being torn apart by a myriad of societal issues, when the (social) media is a hotbed of impassioned (misinformed and disinformed) opinion, and when youth are more visible as advocates and activists than ever before (incomprehensible Hamas demonstrations notwithstanding), the knowledge of and appreciation for our countrys history is demonstrably at a dangerously low ebb.

Which tells me that our gratitude and gratefulness for constitutional amendments (freedom of speech, especially) is fleeting if not in dire peril and makes it more crucial than ever that folks understand that the Second Amendment protects all the rest.

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Ricketts Signs Brief to Defend Gun Owners and Second Amendment – Rural Radio Network

Posted: at 1:13 pm

Ricketts Signs Brief to Defend Gun Owners and Second Amendment  Rural Radio Network

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Dems bow to local control on guns then take it away | BRAUCHLER – coloradopolitics.com

Posted: at 1:13 pm

It is hard to tell which of the following Colorado Democrats hate more: the Second Amendment, or local control of government. A newly drafted bill sponsored by Dems allows them to continue to attack both.

Fewer than three years ago, Sen. Sonja Jaquez Lewis of Longmont, Sen. Chris Kolker of Littleton and Sen. Tom Sullivan of Centennial, all Democrats, voted with their party to blow up Colorados long-standing law which ensured a predictable, statewide approach to firearm regulation. Senate Bill 21-256, passed by all Democrats, created a patchwork of local gun laws that create confusion for law-abiding gun owners. The change in the law did not change the behavior of gun-toting criminals, but that is not the goal of the modern Democrat blame-the-guns approach to governance. Purportedly libertarian-ish Democrat Gov. Jared Polis signed the bill into law without hesitation.

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SB 21-256 made clear the General Assembly believes (o)fficials of local governments are uniquely equipped to make determinations as to regulations necessary in their local jurisdictions and to make determinations as to where concealed handguns can be carried in their local jurisdictions.

Fewer than 30 months later and without any data to support a change Jacquez Lewis, Kolker and Sullivan have changed their minds and now believe local governments are too stupid to determine what laws are necessary in their communities and too untrustworthy to determine where concealed handguns can be carried. No legislator has yet explained what happened to the uniquely equipped local governments. Once again, Democrats show up to save the day with a solution in search of a problem.

Sans any data let alone new data justifying the need for change the bill drafters hijack local control of the regulation of firearms at parks, playgrounds, rec centers, stadiums for any sport and at every level of competition, amusement parks, carnivals, circuses, water parks and any property in any way connected to local government or the grounds next to it. No joke.

This bill draft is the equivalent of the energy-company-crushing setbacks for oil rigs in Colorado. Remember that one? The proposed ballot measure excluded drilling from so many places by creating setbacks from so many sensitive areas that oil production could have lawfully only occurred in Weld County Sheriff Steve Reamss driveway and nowhere else.

This bill draft seeks to push Colorado toward becoming a statewide sensitive space.

Current law prohibits the open carrying of firearms at a polling place, because it may intimidate, threaten, or coerce voters The new law prohibits concealed carrying of weapons for the exact same reasons. To be clear: these gun-hating Dem law makers believe voters may become intimidated, threatened, scared to death, or worse by firearms they cannot see and do not know are there.

After the property owners suck approach of the special legislative session last year, this years legislature and Polis continue their assault on private property rights with this bill. This would-be legislation would ban carrying firearms at numerous private businesses, organizations and on private property, to include: private colleges; churches, synagogues, or other places of worship unless expressly authorized; private nursing homes; any private hospital or place at which medical or health care services are provided, and others.

The most insidious and potentially life-threatening provision of the law is the intended elimination of local school districts authority to protect the children in their charge. For 20 years, rural districts across Colorado the ones with schools 25-plus minutes from law enforcement response to emergencies have had the ability to provide an on-site, immediate response through highly-trained school faculty. Faculty Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response (FASTER) has trained more than 400 people to carry concealed in their schools across 41 districts in Colorado. The participating schools and school districts have eagerly jumped on the opportunity to better protect their students and faculty. But that is not enough, when it comes to those who hate guns.

Despite not a single bad incident having occurred in the seven years FASTER has been training faculty, the Dems under the Gold Dome appear poised to eliminate it as an option for those communities whose law enforcement protectors are relative eons away.

What could be the penalty for the commission of such damning acts with firearms at sensitive places? In 2021, a concealed carry holder who ran afoul of local gun regulations faced only a civil penalty of no more than $50. The new bill by the same folks who voted in the 2021 bill ups the ante to a criminal misdemeanor and a $250 fine. That's 500% more than the just-enacted bill. There is a bigger question here: If carrying concealed in places prohibited by local or state law is a matter of such supreme importance, that as the bill claims it is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, why a small fine? Why no chance for jail and there is none no matter how many times the law is violated?

The answer is obvious. The Democrats in the legislature (and Polis) hate guns and do not value the Second Amendment. Instead, they take any and every opportunity to chisel away at that right.

Whether this draft bill becomes official or not, the one constant in Colorados experience with Democrat-dominant rule in state government is the gun-hating ends always justify the hypocritical means when it comes to hating firearms and infringing on Second Amendment rights.

George Brauchler is the former district attorney for the 18th Judicial District. He also is an Owens Early Criminal Justice Fellow at the Common Sense Institute. He hosts The George Brauchler Show on 710KNUS Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Follow him on Twitter(X): @GeorgeBrauchler.

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Augusta County Second Amendment guy wants to protect schoolkids from books? – Augusta Free Press

Posted: at 1:13 pm

( BillionPhotos.com stock.adobe.com)

Augusta County is so, so lucky that a rando named Jeremy Nance appointed himself the book czar for the county school system.

This Nance fellow, per a story in the News Leader, is responsible for three of the four books that have been banned from public schools in Augusta County.

Interesting note here: Nance doesnt have any children in the school system.

He says hes speaking up for single moms, single parents who dont have time to go to the school board and teachers who are afraid of retaliation.

Of course he is.

What this Nance dude is, actually, is a far, far right political activist.

A quick Google search tells us that Nance, back in 2019, threatened a boycott of Mill Street Grill, a Downtown Staunton restaurant owned by City Councilman Terry Holmes, because Holmes signaled that he wouldnt support a Second Amendment sanctuary resolution being pushed by the local far, far right.

Guns, guns and more guns, but books like the award-winning Golden Boy, by Abigail Tarttelin, about an intersex teenager books are dangerous.

The objection that Nance has to Golden Boy is a pages-long graphic rape scene involving an adult and the teen protagonist.

As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by an adult, the problem I have here is, not the book with the rape scene, but the political activist guy who thinks that just pretending the bad stuff that is perpetrated upon kids doesnt happen means, you know, it doesnt happen.

We see this phenomenon with another book that this Nance fellow objected to, The Swallows, by Lisa Lutz, which challenges the boys will be boys hierarchy in a fictional high school, the problem here being, if youre a far, far right activist, boys will be boys is your favorite ex-president raping a woman in a department store dressing room and then claiming she isnt his type.

Its a shame books like this are still in there,Nance told the Augusta County School Board as he raised his objections.

Sure, it is.

But the real shame is that we have a school board here that gives a guy like a Jeremy Nance the power that he has.

This is your daily reminder that elections matter. The school boards chair, David Shiflett, is leading an effort to review the school systems guidelines to make sure that the materials that are in our libraries are age-appropriate for the students that have access to them.

That review is on the agenda for the Augusta County School Board meeting on Thursday night.

You can bet that the review will end with the board empowering more Jeremy Nances to make sure that kids in Augusta County are protected from the uncomfortable realities of the world that we live in.

Well, except for the uncomfortable reality of gun violence.

It boggles the mind that theres a Jeremy Nance who thinks its more traumatic to read a book than it is to have to walk through a metal detector at the entrance to the school and have armed deputies patrolling the halls, but thats where we are.

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The 2nd Amendment is not about Hunting – WIBC – Indianapolis News & Politics

Posted: October 27, 2023 at 7:30 am

Second Amendment

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Guy Relfords show on Saturday was about Indiana Universitys symposium The Courts, the 2nd Amendment, and Public Policy. The symposium had the provocative subtitle Just Shoot Me. Academia, liberal courts, and liberal politicians erroneously misinterpret the 2nd Amendment. The 2008 Heller Decision settled much of the debate. Militia does not mean the National Guard. In 1791, when the 2nd Amendment was ratified, militia meant the whole of the body of the people. Any member of the community was considered a member of the militia. As Guy has mentioned on numerous occasions on his show, well-regulated does not mean regulated by the government. Well-regulated means a working and or efficient militia.

The President and many liberal politicians believe that the 2nd Amendment in regard to private ownership of arms is for hunting. While many colonialists were expert hunters, the 2nd Amendment was not written for hunting. It was written for self-defense, and the defense against tyranny.

As Guy so excellently explains using Paul Reveres midnight ride,

In riding through the countryside, he (Revere) did not say, The deer are coming, the deer are coming!

Reveres warning was to alert the people to arm themselves against the British Regulars who were coming for them. The Founding Fathers, when writing the 2nd Amendment, understood the importance of the people being armed against tyranny. They lived it.

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Opinion: Protecting Our Second Amendment Rights in St. Louis … – The Missouri Times

Posted: at 7:30 am

Recent legislation passed by our County Council threatens to erode our Second Amendment rights. This legislation obstructs citizens right to open carry by mandating the possession of a concealed carry permit, in opposition to Missouris Constitutional Carry laws. This move is not only problematic but also unconstitutional.

First and foremost, this legislation represents a significant overreach by our local government into the lives of our law-abiding citizens. Unlike the gun-grabbing extremists on the County Council, I recognize the vital role that our Second Amendment plays in safeguarding our individual freedoms. This legislation seeks to limit St. Louis County residents ability to openly carry firearms, imposing unnecessary restrictions on those who seek to defend their families by requiring them to obtain a permit.

One of my primary concerns is that this legislation only applies to unincorporated St. Louis County. This approach creates a confusing patchwork of different rules and regulations across our county, as each city within our district would be forced to pass its own, potentially differing laws regarding open carry. Such a haphazard system is not only confusing for our law-abiding citizens but also impractical for law enforcement agencies tasked with enforcing these varying regulations.

Furthermore, this legislation may also be in direct violation of Missouri state statutes, which explicitly prohibit local governments from passing laws that differ from the state laws concerning firearms. Our state constitution upholds the right of our citizens to bear arms, and it is my firm belief that we should not infringe upon those rights.

As a member of the County Council, I voted against this legislation. Criminals will continue to be criminals, and only law-abiding citizens will follow this new law. This law will also further its proponents stated goal, which is increased gun confiscation. Additionally, state and federal law already prohibits the crimes being used as justification to pass this legislation. We need to support the enforcement and prosecution of the laws already on the books.

We must focus on effective and sensible measures that enhance public safety without infringing on our constitutional rights. This means supporting law enforcement and providing resources for mental health services. Our freedoms and our ability to defend our families should be cherished and protected, not undermined by ill-conceived legislation.

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Statement by Vice President Kamala Harris on the Mass Shooting in … – The White House

Posted: at 7:30 am

Yesterday, Lewiston, Maine became yet another community torn apart by senseless gun violence. This time a bowling alley and a restaurant have been turned into scenes of unimaginable carnage.

Doug and I join the President and Dr. Biden in mourning those who were killed, praying for the many who were injured, and grieving for so many more whose lives are forever changed.

The Biden-Harris Administration will continue to provide full support to local authorities in Maine. I join President Biden in urging area residents to follow the warnings and guidance of local officials as the investigation proceeds.

Let us also continue to speak truth about the moment we are in. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in our nation. It does not have to be this way.

It is a false choice to suggest we must choose between either upholding the Second Amendment or passing reasonable gun safety laws to save lives. Congress can and must make background checks universal. Pass red flag laws. Ban high-capacity magazines. And renew the assault weapons ban.

In the meantime, President Biden and I are not waiting around. Through the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, we will continue to work to save lives.

We do not have a moment to spare, nor a life to spare.

###

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Letter: Second Amendment matters more than ever – Quad-City Times

Posted: at 7:30 am

I'd always taken my Second Amendment rights for granted. Then Obama came along with his statement they cling to their guns and bibles referring, of course, to flyover country. I went to a gun store and there he was, a half size Obama with a notation Employee of the Month. I went home with a 9 mm.

The words: the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed couldn't be more specific. It is a shame that citizens need laws to protect them against the central government, but we do.

The present denizen of the White House would disarm us in the drop of a hat if it weren't for the 2nd Amendment. Iowa recently added the 2nd Amendment to the state Constitution, becoming the third state to do so. Eighteen additional states now have laws declaring themselves gun sanctuaries. The majority of counties in the U.S. have passed gun sanctuary laws. In Illinois, 80 of its sheriffs refuse to prosecute Pritzkers new gun law.

Why is it so important today? In the 20th Century specifically, 80% of the world's murder victims were victims of their own government. This Is the number of innocent people murdered by governments. Are You anti-state yet? In addition to Stalin and Mao, dozens of tin pot tyrants, e.g., Pol Pot, Edi Amin, casually murdered in the guise of discipline. Disarming the populace is a necessary and sufficient act to achieve tyranny.

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The Supreme Court is seriously considering whether domestic … – Vox.com

Posted: at 7:30 am

The next gun rights case before the Supreme Court, United States v. Rahimi, involves an individual that no sensible society would allow to have a gun.

Three years ago, according to the Justice Department, Zackey Rahimi and his girlfriend had an argument in a parking lot where Rahimi threatened to take away their mutual child. He then allegedly grabbed her wrist, knocked her to the ground, dragged her to the car, and hit her head on the dashboard. After he realized that a witness had seen this fight, Rahimi allegedly pulled a gun and fired at this bystander.

He later called his girlfriend and allegedly threatened to shoot her if she told anyone that hed assaulted her.

This is one of a series of gun crimes allegedly committed by Rahimi. In 2020, he allegedly threatened another woman with a gun. According to the Justice Department, Rahimi also participated in a series of five shootings in December 2020 and January 2021. In one alleged incident, he fired into the mans house with an AR-15 rifle. In another, he allegedly followed a truck and fired multiple shots at another car that had been traveling behind the truck after the trucks driver flashed their headlights at Rahimi.

Although Rahimis lawyers claim that these allegations are disputed, they do not deny any of the DOJs specific claims. Nor do they offer an alternative version of these events.

Yet last February, a federal appeals court held that Rahimi and other domestic abusers have a constitutional right to own a gun. The Supreme Court will consider whether this decision was correct at a November 7 oral argument.

The federal law at issue in Rahimi allows someone to be disarmed before they are actually convicted of a violent crime. But the law also provides several due process safeguards.

Before anyone can be disarmed under this law, a court must have issued a restraining order against them, in a proceeding where the defendant was given an opportunity to appear and make their case. Federal law does not disarm anyone unless a court has either explicitly determined that they are a violent threat to their partner or to a child, or implicitly made such a determination by prohibiting them from engaging in violence against that partner or child.

Nevertheless, the Fifth Circuit didnt just strike down this law. It ruled that the law is unconstitutional on its face. That means that, if the Fifth Circuits decision is upheld by the Supreme Court, this federal ban on firearm possession by domestic abusers may never be applied to any individual, no matter how violent that individual may be and no matter how careful the court that issued a restraining order against such an individual was in ensuring that they received due process.

And that brings us to the single worst aspect of the Fifth Circuits decision in United States v. Rahimi: It was correctly decided. Or, at least, it was correctly decided under the Supreme Courts incompetently drafted decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which places an extraordinarily high burden on any government lawyer tasked with defending any gun law in court.

Bruen was supposed to be the crown jewel of originalism the belief, now ascendant among Republican lawyers and judges, that the only legitimate way to read the Constitution is to determine how it was understood when it was ratified. The Bruen opinion was the six GOP-appointed justices attempt to build an originalist framework from the ground up, one that forced judges to rely almost entirely on historical sources when deciding Second Amendment cases.

A little more than a year after Bruen, it is clear that this approach is an unworkable failure that produces deeply immoral outcomes and that has fostered mass confusion within the federal judiciary.

The core question in Rahimi, in other words, is whether the Court will back away from its decision in Bruen, which has led to all kinds of disastrous results, including the Fifth Circuits decision holding that abusive husbands have a right to keep a weapon they could use to murder their wives.

Bruen held that, in order to justify nearly any law regulating firearms, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nations historical tradition of firearm regulation. This means that lawyers defending even the most widely accepted gun laws, such as the federal ban on gun possession by domestic abusers, must show that analogous regulations also existed and were accepted when the Constitution was framed particularly if the law addresses a general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century. If they cannot, the challenged gun law must be struck down.

This places an extraordinarily high burden on any lawyer defending a gun law. When the historical record is ambiguous or indeterminate, the government loses, and a gun law is effectively repealed by the courts. And lawyers defending gun laws face an especially heavy burden when they defend laws that seek to address a problem, like domestic abuse, that has existed for centuries.

Almost immediately, the Bruen decision sparked mass confusion in the federal courts. Judges have reached contradictory results in a multitude of post-Bruen challenges to gun laws. Courts applying Bruen have struck laws prohibiting guns in places of worship, requiring guns to have serial numbers that allow them to be tracked by law enforcement, and prohibiting underage ownership of guns all claiming that these laws are inconsistent with historical tradition.

And if Bruen is legitimate, Zackey Rahimi must have a constitutional right to own a gun.

Until 1871, when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a husband and wife may be indicted for assault and battery upon each other, it was legal in every state for married partners to beat their spouses. There is historical evidence that abused women, in at least some parts of the country, were able to obtain court orders requiring their abusers to temporarily turn over money, which would be forfeited if the abuse continued. But there is no founding-era analog to the federal law disarming domestic abusers.

And so the question the Supreme Court must confront in Rahimi is whether a decision like Bruen, with its unworkable legal standard and catastrophic consequences, can be tolerated any longer.

On the day Bruen was decided, Justice Stephen Breyer warned in a dissenting opinion that, by requiring judges to dive into often-vague and indeterminate historical records, Bruen imposes a task on the lower courts that judges cannot easily accomplish. Courts are, after all, staffed by lawyers, not historians, Breyer continued. And legal experts typically have little experience answering contested historical questions or applying those answers to resolve contemporary problems.

Indeed, Bruen has proved so unworkable and has led so many judges to such upsetting conclusions that many of those judges complain openly about it in their opinions. By announcing an inconsistent and amorphous standard, complained Judge Holly Brady, a Trump appointee to a federal court in Indiana, the Supreme Court has created mountains of work for district courts that must now deal with Bruen-related arguments in nearly every criminal case in which a firearm is found. Another judge slammed the Supreme Courts Second Amendment cases as filled with methodological flaws that invite judges with an axe to grind to selectively find historical evidence that supports the outcome they want to reach anyway, and then use it to justify that result.

Judge Robert Miller, a Reagan appointee, was even more blunt in his assessment of Bruen. After holding that a federal law that prohibits individuals from receiving a firearm while they are under a felony indictment must be struck down under Bruen, Miller concludes his opinion by admitting it was drafted with an earnest hope that its author has misunderstood New York State Rifle v. Bruen. Bruen, Judge Miller continues, insults the framers by assuming they were so short-sighted as to forbid the people, through their elected representatives, from regulating guns in new ways.

Needless to say, sitting federal judges do not typically hurl these kinds of insults at the Supreme Court, as the high Court has more or less unlimited power to sabotage lower court judges work.

One fundamental problem with Bruen, as Judge Millers critique of the decision emphasizes, is that the six Republican-appointed justices who joined it appear to have no understanding of why changes in American society over the past 250 years make it difficult or impossible to draw meaningful analogies between modern gun laws and those that existed when the Constitution was written.

Recall that Justice Clarence Thomass majority opinion in Bruen announced that gun laws that address a general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century are presumptively unconstitutional unless there is a distinctly similar historical regulation from the 1700s. Applying this newly announced rule, Thomas argued that a citywide handgun ban is unconstitutional because firearm violence in densely populated communities was a problem that existed at the time of the founding, but 18th-century lawmakers did not address it with a handgun ban.

But the kind of urban communities that exist in modern-day America did not exist in the early American Republic. According to the 1790 census, New York City had only 33,131 residents around the time when the Second Amendment was ratified. The second-largest city, Philadelphia, had fewer than 29,000 residents.

Eighteenth-century lawmakers, in other words, simply did not confront the problem of firearm violence in densely populated communities because densely populated communities of the kind that struggle with gun violence in modern-day America did not exist in the 18th century. At the time of the founding, Americas largest city had more or less the same population as modern-day Meridian, Mississippi the eighth-largest city in the poorest state in the Union.

And yet, because the Supreme Court declared in a majority opinion that urban policymaking in 1790 was closely analogous to governing modern-day New York City, every judge in the country is now bound to follow this absurd conclusion.

Meanwhile, there are countless other ways that America in the 21st century would be unrecognizable to the framers.

For one thing, early America did not have police forces or, at least, the kind of organized police forces that could enforce modern-day gun laws. While early US communities sometimes relied on citizen watchmen to keep the peace and used patrols to track down escaped enslaved people, publicly funded and organized police forces did not emerge until the middle of the 19th century. Many sources claim that the first such police force in the United States was formed in Boston in 1838. New York City formed its police force just a few years later.

When the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1791, in other words, neither the United States nor any state or municipality had the capacity to enforce a law seeking to disarm domestic abusers. But that doesnt mean that such laws should be declared unconstitutional, any more than modern-day laws regulating the internet are unconstitutional because the framers lacked the ability to send electronic communications.

We simply have no idea how people in 1791 would have regulated guns or what sort of regulations they would have deemed permissible if early Americans actually had the state infrastructure necessary to do modern-day law enforcement. Bruens inquiry into which kinds of laws existed in a pre-police society tells us nothing about which sort of laws the framers would have deemed constitutional.

Similarly, we have no idea how early American lawmakers would have regulated the kind of advanced weapons that are widely available today, but that did not exist at all or that were at least very uncommon when the Second Amendment was ratified.

Indeed, the sorts of firearms that were widely available in the 18th century are not the sort of weapons that were typically used to commit acts of violence against family members or romantic partners. As Ohio State University historian Randolph Roth explained in a 2019 book chapter, fewer than 10 percent of household homicides in colonial and revolutionary New England or Maryland were committed with a gun.

The most likely reason why 18th-century firearms were not often used in family violence is that the kind of muzzle-loading guns that were available at the time could not be used impulsively unless they were already loaded for some other purpose. These guns could not be kept loaded because the black powder used by these guns would corrode the weapons inner workings and would become moist, losing its ability to ignite. Loading such a gun took at least a minute, as the user had to pour powder down the barrel, hold it in place with wadding, and drop or ram the shot or ball onto the charge.

So one other likely reason why 18th-century Americans did not enact many of the sort of gun laws that exist today is that guns were fundamentally less dangerous in the early Republic. The fact that early Americans did not forbid impulsive men the sort of men who might murder their wives from owning a muzzle-loading musket tells us nothing about how the framers might have regulated a weapon that can be stored while loaded, that can be hidden in someones pocket or waistband, and that can rapidly discharge more than a dozen bullets.

In fairness, Bruen does acknowledge that cases involving dramatic technological changes may require a more nuanced approach, and it does include language indicating that, say, machine gun bans remain viable, even though machine guns were not invented until 1884. Bruen says that the Second Amendment protects the possession and use of weapons that are in common use at the time. So machine guns will remain illegal so long as they remain uncommon.

But the fact that the drafters and ratifiers of the Second Amendment were comfortable living in a world where muzzle-loaded muskets were commonplace tells us nothing about whether they would have also wanted the Constitution to protect weapons that can be carried while loaded and that can turn a mere argument into a murder in less than a second.

At this point, you might be wondering how six Supreme Court justices all of them legally trained and well-credentialed could have embraced a legal framework with such obvious flaws that has been so harshly criticized by judges across the political spectrum. The short answer to this question is one word: originalism.

Originalism, in Justice Amy Coney Barretts words, is the belief that constitutional text means what it did at the time it was ratified and that this original public meaning is authoritative. All reasonable judges believe that it is sometimes useful to inquire into how the Constitution was originally understood in order to decide cases, but originalism, at least in its strongest form, claims that this is the only legitimate way to interpret the Constitution.

Many Republican lawyers, including Thomas, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Barrett, view originalism as an important part of their identity.

Barrett, at least, also acknowledges two serious problems with the originalist methodology: It sometimes leads to terrible or ridiculous results, and it sometimes produces no result at all. As Barrett wrote in a 2016 article co-authored with scholar John Copeland Nagle, adherence to originalism arguably requires, for example, the dismantling of the administrative state, the invalidation of paper money, and the reversal of Brown v. Board of Education results that, Barrett admits, would wreak havoc.

Similarly, Barrett has also acknowledged that originalist methods dont always produce a clear result, although her answer to how originalists should approach this problem is unsatisfying: For an originalist, the meaning of the text is fixed so long as it is discoverable.

Justice Thomass biggest innovation in his Bruen opinion is that he figured out a way for originalists to resolve Second Amendment cases even when it is not clear how that amendment would have been understood at the time it was ratified simply apply a presumption that all gun laws are unconstitutional, and strike down the law unless the government produces sufficient historical evidence to rebut this presumption.

Thomass innovation makes a lot of sense if you are an originalist judge who wants to solve the problem of not knowing how to rule on a case if the historical record is indeterminate provided, of course, that you dont care one bit what happens to the people of the United States after countless gun laws are struck down. But Bruen does nothing to solve the other problem acknowledged by Barretts scholarship: What should an originalist do if their methodology leads to a truly awful and destabilizing result?

A responsible Court would confess that it erred in Bruen and come up with a new framework that can be applied in a sensible and predictable way by lower court judges. (As it happens, in the decade before Bruen, lower court judges came up with a two-step framework for deciding Second Amendment cases that was accepted by every federal appeals court that considered it. The Supreme Court could simply bring that framework back.)

And there is a precedent for the Court swiftly abandoning a disastrous legal framework after a majority of the justices realized it led to disaster.

In Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), the Supreme Court upheld a public school districts decision to expel two students who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in class the students were Jehovahs Witnesses, and they objected to saying the pledge on religious grounds. Almost immediately after it was handed down, the Gobitis decision triggered a wave of hate crimes against Witnesses, with one Southern sheriff dismissing the violence because theyre traitors the Supreme Court says so, aint you heard?

Three years later, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), a humbled Court reversed course, holding that the First Amendment forbids the government from forcing anyone to say something they do not want to say.

Will todays justices show the same humility their predecessors showed in Barnette? Unlikely. But there is a way out of the Bruen dilemma that will allow the six justices who joined that benighted decision to save face, while affirming that the government may enact reasonable gun regulations such as a ban on gun possession by domestic abusers.

Although Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh both joined Thomass opinion in Bruen, they also joined a separate concurring opinion by Kavanaugh, which enumerated several categorical exceptions to the right to bear arms:

[N]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. ...

We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those in common use at the time. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.

Kavanaugh added, moreover, that this list does not purport to be exhaustive, which implies that he would also endorse other categorical exceptions perhaps one for domestic abusers, or for people that the legislature has determined are too dangerous to be armed.

This list of Second Amendment carve-outs, moreover, appeared in the Supreme Courts decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Courts first decision holding that the Constitution protects an individual right to bear arms. And these carve-outs were not added to the Heller opinion because the Court determined that they fit into some kind of originalist framework.

Rather, as Justice John Paul Stevens revealed less than a year before his death in 2019, Justice Antonin Scalia, the author of Heller, added this language after relatively moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy asked for some important changes to the original draft of the Heller opinion.

Kennedy is no longer on the Court, but Kavanaugh, his successor, appears to have appointed himself as the keeper of this compromise that Kennedy struck with Scalia. Add on Robertss decision to join Kavanaughs Bruen opinion, plus the Courts three liberals, and thats five votes that are willing to create categorical carve-outs to the right to bear arms which exist outside of Thomass originalist framework.

Moreover, while Thomass framework supports the Fifth Circuits unconscionable decision in Rahimi, Kavanaughs framework offers the Court a way to rule that domestic abusers do not have a constitutional right to own a gun. As the Justice Department argues in its brief, the Court can add a new carve-out to Kavanaughs list, holding that the Second Amendment permits lawmakers to disarm people who are not law-abiding, responsible citizens.

Thats not a particularly satisfying answer to the legal questions presented by Rahimi because it places the Court in the role of an arbitrary policymaker, striking down some gun laws and upholding others because five or more justices think that a new carve-out should apply. But its a much more sensible outcome than affirming the Fifth Circuit and allowing abusers to have guns.

The most responsible course the Supreme Court could take, given Bruens many flaws, would be to overrule that decision in its entirety and announce a different, more workable framework that courts can apply in future Second Amendment cases such as the two-step framework that was used by the courts of appeals before the Supreme Court made them abandon that framework in Bruen.

But, since this Supreme Court is unlikely to admit that it erred, Kavanaughs willingness to create categorical exceptions to the right to bear arms offers the Court a way to save face while also reversing the Fifth Circuits terrible Rahimi decision.

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