Category Archives: Second Amendment

When Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court in 2020, conservatives celebrated that there are now four avowed originalists on the Court. To those on the right, the latest version of the Roberts Court had the potential to be the greatest originalist Court in history. But this terms biggest decisions show how wrong those conservatives wereeven as they got all the results they wanted.

Although conservative originalists have for years been touting their method as restrained, sensible, and tightly tethered to constitutional text and history, this term blew away such pretenses. If this is the great conservative originalism, then those professing it have finally and conclusively revealed it to be what many skeptics already considered it: a hollow edifice designed to hide an ugly and aggressive ideological agenda.

This is a radical Court dominated by conservatives who treat the past practices of state legislatures as determinative of the Constitutions meaning, warping the broadly worded language that was meant to enshrine fundamental principles of liberty and equality in our national charter. This is a Court that insists it is following history and tradition where they lead, while cherry-picking the history it cares about to reach conservative results. These are damning moves for conservative justices who pride themselves on fidelity to the Constitutions first principles.

Lets start with Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, where a five-justice majority overruled Roe v. Wade and, for the first time in history, stripped away a previously announced constitutional right essential to bodily integrity and equal citizenship. Dobbs offers one of the most crabbed views of liberty in Supreme Court history. Justice Samuel Alitos majority opinion presents liberty as an empty idea. According to Alito, liberty is a capacious term with hundreds of possible meanings. Because it could mean anything, Alito claimed, courts should be extremely loath to recognize rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution. Alitos stingy view of liberty is driven by his fear that courts will inevitably engage in freewheeling judicial policymaking in the guise of protecting liberty. The Dobbs majority turned to history and tradition to stop courts from safeguarding unenumerated fundamental rights, beginning with the right to abortion.

From the 1969 issue: The right of abortion

Alitos account of history and tradition ignores the most salient aspect of the Fourteenth Amendments history: the horrific abuses that led the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment to push through changes to the Constitution to broadly guarantee the protection of substantive fundamental rights. The through line from the abolitionist critiques of slavery to the debates over the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments was the idea that slavery was built on the denial of bodily integrity, coerced reproduction and the rape of enslaved women, and the tearing apart of Black families. Alitos sweeping condemnation of unenumerated fundamental rights ignores the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment sought to guarantee rights to bodily integrity and to marry and raise a family, and the right to decide for oneself whether, when, and with whom to form a family.

In short, reproductive freedom is in the Constitution. Alito simply refuses to grapple with the Constitutions true history.

Instead, Alito relies heavily on state practice, insisting that because abortion was widely prohibited at the time of the Fourteenth Amendments ratification in 1868, state bans on abortion are constitutionally permissible. Since Brown v. Board of Education, arguments from state practice have been the go-to argument for those seeking to gut the Fourteenth Amendments promises of freedom and equal citizenship. Defenders of school-segregation laws, bans on interracial marriage, bans on abortion, sodomy laws, and bans on same-sex marriage argued that each of these practices was constitutional based on state legislative practice at the time of ratification. Alito draws on similar arguments to justify overruling Roe.

Alitos state-practice argument is wrong and deeply dangerous: The fundamental rights of Americans do not rise or fall depending on a head count of state practice in 1868. The Fourteenth Amendment changed the Constitution to correct a long history of subordination and suppression of fundamental rights, not freeze into amber state practices of the day. But Alitos majority opinion shows no interest in understanding the Fourteenth Amendment. His project, despite his denials to the contrary, was to overrule Roe and provide a road map to strip away bedrock rights that the Court has protected for nearly a century, including rights to use contraceptives, enjoy sexual intimacy, and marry the loved one of ones choice, regardless of sexprotections that Justice Clarence Thomas, in his Dobbs concurrence, indicated he would take away.

In his account of state practice, Alito presents a slanted version of history, ignoring the fact that common law made abortion accessible early in pregnancy and whitewashing the illicit racist and sexist judgments baked into the campaign to prohibit abortion. When states moved to criminalize abortion beginning in the mid-19th century, it was based on the view, shared by the Supreme Court of that era, that a womans proper role was to bear and raise children, as well as racist fears that white Protestant women were flouting their maternal duties at a time when immigrant populations were expanding. This is hardly history that a Court concerned with the Fourteenth Amendments core commitments would defer to. Rather than grapple with it, Alito blithely dismisses it as irrelevant, allowing the dead hand of an unjust past to trump the majestic language inscribed in the Constitution.

Dobbs deployed selective history to take away a fundamental right; the 63 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen deployed selective history to create one: a radically expansive right to be armed in public. The most jaw-dropping aspect of Bruen is the newly minted test the conservative majority invented to adjudicate future challenges to gun-safety legislation. Instead of using the weighted interest-balancing approach that is the norm in constitutional law, the six conservatives insisted that the government must affirmatively prove that its firearm regulation is part of a historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms. As guns have proliferated, weapons have become more dangerous, and mass shootings have become an all-too-common occurrence, the 63 conservative majority insisted that new approaches to gun safety are constitutionally illegitimate. Going forward, only gun-safety laws that are backed by strong historical precedents are constitutionally permissible.

John A. Eterno: I was a police officer for 20 years. I know what it means to put guns on the street.

Bruen never explained why a past tradition of gun-safety regulationwritten at a time when firearms were less powerful than modern onesis hardwired into the Constitution. The Second Amendment may protect an individual right to bear arms, but nothing in its history freezes in place gun-safety regulations of the founding era. The 63 Court has invented a harsh test completely out of whack with the rest of constitutional law, which takes into account both rights and government interests. Nowhere else in constitutional law does the Supreme Court employ a test that is so shackled to historical practice.

Justice Thomass majority opinion in Bruen devoted virtually no space to canvassing the text and history of the Second Amendment. That is because nothing in history supports the idea that the government cannot enact reasonable gun regulations that respect the right to own a gun, while also protecting public safety. The problem is not the Constitution; it is the fact that the 63 conservative Court invented the idea that only gun-safety legislation with a strong historical backing is constitutionally permissible.

The Bruen majority promised that the government need only identify a well-established and representative historical analogue, not a historical twin, then spent the bulk of the opinion dismissing every single example of what Justice Stephen Breyers dissent called a 700-year Anglo-American tradition of regulating the public carriage of firearms in general, and concealed or concealable firearms in particular. The takeaway is that the conservative-majority Court will relentlessly manipulate history to find a way to strike down gun-safety legislation that it dislikes. Bruen is just the beginning.

In this terms religion cases, Carson v. Makin and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the 63 conservative majority dramatically expanded the protections of the free-exercise clause, without a whiff of attention to history and tradition, while whittling down the establishment clause in light of historical practice. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor trenchantly put it, The Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation. This emerges most starkly in Kennedy, where the conservative majority played fast and loose with both the factual record and the law to overturn the dismissal of a public-school football coach who was fired for leading students in prayers on the 50-yard line following his teams games. Dismissing huge swaths of prior establishment-clause doctrine as long abandoned, Justice Neil Gorsuchs majority opinion insisted that historical practices and understandings sharply limit separation of church and state principles. On Gorsuchs account, it was the school district who overstepped its authority, and the idea that Kennedys prayers might have coerced nonbelievers can be dismissed.

Adam Laats: The Supreme Court has ushered in a new era of religion at school

It is no coincidence that, in the same term that the 63 Court dismantled the right to abortion, it also rejected the notion that the government must act with a secular purpose and may not endorse religion. Where will the Courts disdain for the establishment clause go next? Kennedy raises the possibility that the conservative majority might allow official teacher-led prayers on the basis of historical practice of state-sanctioned prayers in public schools. Those who care about the religion clausesboth of themshould be gravely worried that the Court might enable state efforts that degrade from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authorityprecisely what James Madisons famous writings on freedom of conscience and religious equality warned against.

As these examples illustrate, history and tradition is the new calling card of a Supreme Court that is willing to upend our constitutional order in the name of traditionalism. Do not label the Roberts Court originalist, if that term is to have the methodological meaning its supporters have been advertising for years. It is not. It is a deeply unprincipled conservative Court majority that manipulates both the Constitution and history to reach conservative results, reversing rights it despises and supercharging those it reveres.

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Originalism Is the Supreme Courts Favorite Justification - The Atlantic

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The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution - The Star Democrat

A widespread belief is that the political system must be responsive to voters demands. But this is not obvious at all. Consider the following statement in the Wall Street Journals report on the adoption of a gun control bill by Congress (House Expected to Approve Landmark Gun Legislation, June 24, 2022):

The House was expected to pass the widest firearms legislation in decades Friday, hours after the bipartisan package won Senate approval, clearing the way for President Bidens signature and giving supporters hope that the countrys political system can respond to mounting gun violence.

Suppose the majority of the voters are in favor of slavery or that they are at least willing to accept it in return for something else as part of political bargaining. Or suppose that, in order to reduce murders by 39%, a majority of American voters wanted to jail all young males from their 17th birthday until they turn 25. Should the political system be responsive to this? Many people, including libertarians, classical liberals, and your humble blogger, would answer no. What other people mean when they say that the political system should be responsive is that it should be responsive to what they want.

Libertarians and classical liberals believe that the political system should not be responsive to majority demands on certain issues. A constitution, written or unwritten, should aim at protecting individual rights in an autoregulated social order, whatever a political majority happens to want. Some constitutional principles are beyond politics.

But what should be and should not be beyond politics? To try and answer this question, it is useful to be cognizant with James Buchanans constitutional political economy. In this perspective, what should be beyond politics are general rules that could presumably meet the consent of every and all individualsconstitutional rules that govern and constrain day-to-day politics. Under these constraints, politics is the way citizens bargain toward non-unanimous collective choices that are presumed necessary for efficient social cooperation. (On this approach, you may want to have a look at my Econlib review of James Buchanan and Gordon Tullocks classic The Calculus of Consent; and my review of Buchanans Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative in Regulation.)

The implications of this abstract theory are not always obvious. They require reflection and analysis. To take a current example, the Second Amendment of the American constitution guarantees residents of this country the right to keep and bear arms, which cannot be abrogated nor abridged trough ordinary politics. The Supreme Court just reaffirmed the primacy of the Second argument over politics (although it still allowed political regulations that arguably contradict the principle). Imagine if the First Amendment was subject to constant political meddling. Citizens may unanimously want to change the constitution, but it is not crystal clear how we make sure that the amendment process is not corrupted by politics.

It is pretty clear that there could be no unanimity on abrogating or even weakening the Second Amendment, in which case the constitutional rule would stand and remain beyond politics. In practice, of course, if authoritarians and bigots become a stable majority and cannot peacefully persuade the rest of the citizenry, the constitution will likely be violated. Yet, the longer it holds and the more gridlock it creates, the more likely a temporary majority will be unable to abolish the liberties of a minority.

There is another answer the question of how to preserve the (conventional) rules that should be beyond politics but are undermined by politics. It is to escape politics altogether. Anthony de Jasay thus took a stand against politics, including in his book with this very title (Against Politics, Routledge, 1998). In this perspective, one believes or hopes that a system of individual liberty will work better without an overpowering state (see my discussion of Michael Huemers defense of anarchy in Regulation). If anarchy works, any individual would of course be free to keep and bear arms, or not, as he (or she) wishes.

One thing is pretty sure: a system where politics (defined as the making of collective choices without unanimous consent) is supreme cannot be trusted to preserve individual rights. The political system should not be responsive to every wish. And it cannot be responsible to every wish be as long as individuals hold different preferences and values.

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Second Amendment: Beyond Politics or Against Politics? - Econlib

Guns up! Shoot back! As News2Share chronicles via a pair of Mississippi events, black pro-gun marchers exist in a no-coverage zone

By Matt Taibbi and Ford Fischer / Substack

If people arent going to do their job, then were here to do it for them, said Nick Bezzel, of the Elmer Geronimo Pratt Pistol & Rifle Gun Club, after being told for the second time today that officials in Brookhaven, Mississippi wouldnt meet with him and other armed black activists.

Bezzel was with a group of demonstrators, including Black Panthers, who were upset over a case involving a 24-year-old Federal Express driver named DMonterrio Gibson. On January 24th earlier this year, Gibson was shot at by a man named Brandon Case and his father, Gregory Case, while attempting to make deliveries.

The two Cases were eventually charged with assault, but bonded out quickly. Gibson and the accompanying group wanted elevated charges, for instance attempted murder or a hate crime. Ford FischersNews2Sharecameras captured the scenes of activists being told a planned meeting with a District Attorney was called off, and being thrown out of the area by the Brookhaven police chief just as they were leaving.

Two days later, a coalition of black pro-gun groups, including Black Panthers, the Black Riders Liberation Party, the aforementioned Elmer Geronimo Pratt Gun Club, Sisters of the Underground, the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, the Black Power Militia, the Black Power Coalition, and others, gathered on Juneteenth in Natchez, Mississippi at the site of the Devils Punchbowl, where some historians say up to 20,000 black people died during and after the Civil War.

News2Sharecaptured those scenes as well, which included a collective signing of a Declaration of the Regulated United Black Militia. Some protesters brandished a placard with a Declaration of Self-Determination by Black Peoples and Organizations, while others replaced Hands up, dont shoot! with a new chant: Guns up! Shoot back! Other chants included:

Black people in America aint taking it no more, is that right? Thats right!

We believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a limb, and a life for a goddamn life!

These are different times Guns up, shoot back! I said, goddamnit, black power!

As Ford narrated:

Despite the obvious newsworthiness of these several militias from around the country gathering to sign a Declaration of the Regulated United Black Militia, no other media covered the event.

There are a lot of taboos on commercial television, which for instance doesnt like to show scenes of poverty (unless its being chased by police), rarely interviews non-voters, almost never does military contracting fraud stories, and seldom shows results on the ground of American military/drone strikes, even if theyve already appeared on the airwaves of other countries.

Perhaps the most dependable taboo in American media, however, involves black Second Amendment advocates. As Ford andNews2Sharehave documented over the years, there are many such groups, and they sometimes march in conjunction with groups like the Boogaloo Boys. In fact, the biggest taboo of all might be showing such groups demonstrating together:

Whatever your feelings about guns I personally am not a fan the psychology of the contrasting coverage of pro-gun demonstrations is fascinating. News audiences are clearly meant to associate white pro-gun protesters with a dangerous and probably organized national race-hatred movement, while black pro-gun protesters either dont exist or are a fringe movement not worth covering. Under no circumstance must such groups be shown together, even when they organize co-demonstrations. The first installment ofActivism, Uncensoredfrom last June, for instance, showed such a joint demonstration in Virginia Beach:

Its often hard to gauge whether certain movements are gaining or losing strength nationally, or are simply organizing more effectively thanks to the Internet. However, its clear the national press doesnt have a settled-upon strategy for covering armed black protesters. Most commonly they appear in reflection, shown as an exaggerated phantom of conservative news coverage, with theNew York Timesblasting Fox News for over-depicting fringe hate groups during the Obama years a classic example. These groups do exist, however, and their shows of strength in places like Natchez are clearly newsworthy. Whats behind the taboo?

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Activism, Uncensored: Are Black 2nd Amendment Advocates the Ultimate Taboo? - Scheerpost.com

Virginia governor speaks on guns, crime

Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin sounds off on progressive policies on crime, Second Amendment rights and protests at Supreme Court justices homes on One Nation.

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Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R-Va., said politics has "crept into" discussions of the Second Amendment and gun control Saturday on "One Nation."

GOV. GLENN YOUNGKIN: I'm a staunch defender of our Second Amendment, and I think what's happened is politics has crept into this issue. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't have a discussion about how we keep our kids safe in school, which is why we went to work right away.

SUPREME COURT GUN DECISION SHOOTS DOWN NY RULE THAT SET HIGH BAR FOR CONCEALED CARRY LICENSES

I brought our secretary of education, I brought our secretary of public safety, our secretary of health and human resources together literally the next morning. We immediately pushed harder to get in our budget funding for school resource officers so every school can have one. We signed a bill that said that every school is going to have a safety audit prepared with law enforcement in order to keep kids safe.

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Politics has 'crept into' debate on guns, Second Amendment rights: Virginia governor - Fox News

SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE 2021 UNIVERSAL

REGISTRATION DOCUMENT

FILED WITH THE AMF ON JUNE 28TH, 2022

Universal Registration document and annual financial report 2021 filed with the AMF (Autorit des Marchs Financiers) on March 25, 2022 under No. D. 22-0156

First amendment to Universal Registration document and annual financial report 2021 filed with the AMF (Autorit des Marchs Financiers) on May 3, 2022 under No. D. 22-0156-A01

This is a translation into English of the (universal) registration document of the Company issued in French and it is

available on the website of the Issuer

Socit anonyme (Public Limited Company) with capital of 2,468,663,292 euros

Head office: 16 boulevard des Italiens, 75 009 PARIS

R.C.S.: PARIS 662 042 449

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Summary

1. APPROVAL BY THE AMF OF THE 2021 UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION DOCUMENT AND 1ST

AMENDEMENT TO THE 2021 UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION DOCUMENT, IN ENGLISH VERSION

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2.

GENERAL INFORMATION

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3.

STATUTORY AUDITORS

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4.

PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR THE UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION DOCUMENT

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5.

TABLES OF CONCORDANCE

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This second amendment to the 2021 Universal Registration Document has been filed with the AMF on 28 June 2022 as competent authority under Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 without prior approval pursuant to Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129;

The universal registration document may be used for the purposes of an offer to the public of securities or admission of securities to trading on a regulated market if approved by the AMF together with any amendments, if applicable, and a securities note and summary approved in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2017/1129.

This Universal Registration Document may form part of a prospectus of the Issuer consisting of separate documents within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation.

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1. APPROVAL BY THE AMF OF THE 2021 UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION DOCUMENT AND 1ST AMENDEMENT TO THE 2021 UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION DOCUMENT, IN ENGLISH VERSION

1.1. Approval of the 2021 Universal Registration Document:

The 2021 Universal Registration Document was approved on 28 June 2022 by the AMF as competent authority under Regulation (EU) 2017/1129.

The AMF approves this document after verifying that the information contained in it is complete, consistent and comprehensible. The 2021 Universal Registration Document has the following approval number: R. 22-031.

Such approval should not be considered as a favourable opinion on the issuer covered by the Universal Registration Document.

The 2021 Universal Registration Document may be used for the purpose of offering to the public of securities or for the admission of financial securities to trading on a regulated market if it is supplemented by a securities note and, where appropriate, a summary and its amendment(s). In this case, the securities note, the summary and all the amendments made to the universal registration document since its approval are approved separately in accordance with Article 10 (3), 2nd subparagraph of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129.

It is valid until 28 June 2023 and, during that period and at the latest at the same time as the securities note and under the conditions of Articles 10 and 23 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129, must be completed by an amendment to the Universal Registration Document in the event of significant new developments or material errors or inaccuracies.

1.2. Approval of the 1st amendment to the 2021 Universal Registration Document:

The 1st Amendment to the 2021 Universal Registration Document was approved on 28 June 2022 by the AMF as competent authority under Regulation (EU) 2017/1129.

The AMF approves this document after verifying that the information contained in it is complete, consistent and comprehensible. The 1st Amendment to the 2021 Universal Registration Document has the following approval number: R. 22-031.

Such approval should not be considered as a favourable opinion on the issuer covered by the Universal Registration Document.

The 2021 Universal Registration Document may be used for the purpose of offering to the public of securities or for the admission of financial securities to trading on a regulated market if it is supplemented by a securities note and, where appropriate, a summary and its amendment(s). In this case, the securities note, the summary and all the amendments made to the universal registration document since its approval are approved separately in accordance with Article 10 (3), 2nd subparagraph of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129.

It is valid until 28 June 2023 and, during that period and at the latest at the same time as the securities note and under the conditions of Articles 10 and 23 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129, must be completed by an amendment to the Universal Registration Document in the event of significant new developments or material errors or inaccuracies.

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BNP Paribas : 2nd amendment to the 2021 Universal Registration Document - Marketscreener.com

Article 1, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states in part, " The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of several states." So who are 'the people' who get to vote? The founding fathers use the term 'the people' to mean free white males such as themselves.

Article 2, section 8 talks of the importance "of the Militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions to provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia." The dictionary term for Militia is "An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers, on call for service in an emergency."

The second amendment is all about the importance of maintaining a well regulated Militia.

"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." One sentence. We know in 1791 the term 'the people' does not mean everyone. It means free white males. One way the constitution provides for arming the Militia is to ensure that its citizens soldiers have the right to keep and bear arms.

The second amendment is about protecting the Militia and the citizen soldiers that are part of a Militia. If the founding fathers wanted to protect stand alone individual gun rights, they could have done so without tying gun rights to a well regulated Militia. Even then gun rights would have been for people like themselves.

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Letter to the Editor-Second Amendment | Opinion | swiowanewssource.com - The Audubon County Advocate Journal

The Advisory Committee on Civil Rules of Federal Judicial Conference recently approved several amendments to Fed. R. Evid. 702 intended to quash lackadaisical and flaccid Daubert gatekeeping.

Below is the amended text of the rule, with deletions in brackets and italics, and additions underlined and bolded:

Rule 702. Testimony by expert witnesses.

A witness who is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise if [the court finds that] the proponent has demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that:

These amendments do not change the substance of Rule 702s standards for admission of expert testimony helpfulness, factual basis, reliability, and fit. Instead, the amendments are intended to emphasize judges role as gatekeeper and remind courts this is not a question for the jury to decide.

To that end, the first amendment provides that a judge should exclude expert testimony unless the substantive criteria of Rule 702 have been met by a preponderance of the evidence. The Draft Committee Notes accompanying the proposal explained, [M]any courts have held that the critical questions of the sufficiency of an experts basis, and the application of the experts methodology, are questions of weight and not admissibility. These rulings are an incorrect application of Rules 702 and 104. Too many courts have succumbed to this incorrect application, with far too many judges, instead, ruling that helpfulness to the jury, sufficient basis, reliability, and fit were matters of weight for the jury to decide. The Draft Committee Notes further clarified, [T]his does not mean, as certain courts have held, that arguments about the sufficiency of an experts basis always go to weight and not admissibility. Rather, it means that once the court has found the admissibility requirement to be met by a preponderance of the evidence, any attack by the opponent will go only to the weight of the evidence. The Committees intent is to reiterate the proper standard with explicit wording in the black letter of Rule 702.

The second amendment in subsection (d) requires an experts opinion to demonstrate that the experts reliable principles and methods were reliably applied to the facts of the case at hand. The Draft Committee Notes clarify that this amendment is intended to stop extravagant claims that are unsupported by the experts basis and methodology. This change is intended to stop courts from justifying admission of expert opinion by reasoning that the methodology matters, not the ultimate opinion. In other words, the amendments are intended to signal to judges that an expert should be excluded if the conclusion does not logically follow from a reliable application of the experts principles and methods, which will potentially lead to a higher rate of expert exclusions than were seen under Daubert.

Nothing in this amendment imposes any new procedures or standards. It is merely an effort to clarify the standard and to begin to rectify the ubiquitous errors made by courts when determining the admissibility of expert opinion. The approved amendment will be reviewed by the Judicial Conference in the fall, then the U.S. Supreme Court, and finally the U.S. Congress. If Congress approves the amendment, it will take effect on December 1, 2023

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As Senate negotiators continue work on fine-tuning concepts for a gun control framework announced last week, one issue that has received surprisingly little attention is the potential inclusion of juvenile records in federal firearm background checks.

Who could argue with that? one might say. The more records available for review, the better.

The truth, as usual, is more complicated than most people realize.

Including juvenile records in firearms background checks presents a number of thorny issues, including those related to due process, developmental psychology, and logistics. Anyone who values the Second Amendment and fundamental fairness should approach the issue with caution and skepticism.

First, it is important to understand how the current federal background check process for firearm acquisition works.

In the case of a federally licensed dealer (FFL), the intended recipient visits the FFLs place of business and fills out a form answering under penalties of perjury yes or no to various questions about potentially disqualifying adjudications, commitments, convictions, or other circumstances.

The FFL then contacts the FBI or a state criminal records agency (depending on whether the state in question has opted in to administering its own system), which checks the individuals personal identifiers against the records available to the system.

It is important to understand that under current law, disqualifying circumstances are meant to be categorical and objective. That is, the only question for the background check system is whether any records indicate a person falls into a statutorily defined class of prohibited persons.

If not, the transfer is approved.

If so, the transfer is denied.

If the matter is unclear, the transfer is delayed, and the underlying circumstances are subject to further review.

In order to ensure such delays dont lead to de facto prohibitions without actual proof of ineligibility, however, FFLs have the option (but not the requirement) to transfer the firearm after three business days elapse from when the background check was initiated. The FFL, of course, must not have any reason to believe the person is actually prohibited before making the transfer.

In the case of a delay-transfer, background check analysts continue trying to resolve the question of the persons eligibility for several more weeks (up to about 90 days). If a disability is eventually established, the case will be referred to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives for possible retrieval of the firearm and, where appropriate, prosecution of the individual for lying on the background check form.

The records that populate the background check system are overwhelmingly provided by the states, and include records of arrest, conviction, and the outcome of other judicial proceedings.

The statutorily defined categories of prohibited persons most likely to implicate juvenile records include any person who:

This is where things get complicated.

Thats because there is a separate justice system pertaining to juveniles in the states.

As explained on a government website that describes the features of the juvenile justice system, the process operates according to the premise that youth are fundamentally different from adults, both in terms of level of responsibility and potential for rehabilitation.

In line with these goals, the system typically takes a more paternalistic and less punitive view of justice than the adult criminal justice system. The website continues:

The juvenile justice system takes a significantly more restorative approach than the adult criminal justice system. A truly successful case for youth would result in the adolescent learning from the experience without exposure to the severity of an adult prison, altering their decisions and life course moving forward, and having no future contact with the juvenile or criminal justice systems. ***

There exists a firm belief that youth can and will lead healthy and constructive lives if given the opportunity to grow instead of being presumed irredeemable and segregated from their communities.

The flipside of this restorative approach, however, is that the juvenile system is typically more informal and less focused on procedural due process than the adult criminal justice system. Most states do not consider adjudications of delinquency in the same category as criminal convictions.

This promotes the goal of giving the system more options to provide services and rehabilitative opportunities to the accused juvenile.

From the juveniles perspective, however, there are not all the same procedural protections from state action as in the adult system.

This restorative emphasis and lower threshold of judicial process also means records of juvenile adjudications are treated differently than criminal convictions. Most are not considered public records, for example. And often they are purged when the juvenile reaches the age of majority. In general, juvenile records are less likely to be held against the individual than records of criminal convictions.

Of course, juvenile misbehavior varies in degrees. And in most states, very serious behavior homicides or assaults resulting in serious physical injury, for example can lead to a juvenile being prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system, with all the usual consequences that implies.

Given all this, including records of juvenile adjudications in firearm-related background check systems can introduce serious legal, philosophical, and practical problems.

Developmentally, juveniles as compared to adults are likely to be relatively ignorant, impulsive, overconfident, and shortsighted to lack perspective and mature judgement. All this, of course, predictably leads to more disruptive tendencies. But sometimes acting out on these tendencies says less about the character of the juvenile than the persons age, development, and circumstances.

The very existence of juvenile justice systems throughout the states demonstrates a consensus that it is cruel to allow bad decision-making in youth to hold back someone in adulthood who has gotten his or her act together.

Moreover, when it comes to due process and the ability of juveniles to assert their rights against unjustified or erroneous state action, they do not have the resources, sophistication, or procedural benefits available to defendants in the adult criminal justice system. In other words, even innocent juveniles may have to take the rap, rather than beat the rap, simply because they do not have the means, knowledge, or wherewithal to assert their rights.

Practically speaking, the considerable problems that have plagued background check systems even with criminal records are likely to be even more pronounced with juvenile records. The quality, availability, reliability, consistency, accuracy, and thoroughness of juvenile records will almost certainly be less across the board than criminal records, because the very point of having a separate system is so these records DO NOT follow juveniles throughout their lives.

Finally, using juvenile records against individuals ONLY in the Second Amendment context disparages this fundamental liberty and treats it as a second-class right.

This should chill the heart of any pro-gun advocate who understands the essential difference between a right the government cannot abrogate without compelling and well-established justification versus a privilege it can administer, bestow, and deny at its own pleasure.

Given these issues, NRA-ILA recommends limiting records about juveniles in firearm-related background check systems to those pertaining to criminal convictions in the adult system.

Rest assured, the NRA will be closely scrutinizing the outcome of the Senate negotiations to ensure issues pertaining to juvenile records are not used as an end run to prevent law-abiding, responsible adults from benefitting from the right to keep and bear arms.

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Juvenile Records for Background Checks: An Issue That Should Provoke Caution, Skepticism - NRA ILA

AUBURN, Ala. Im a left-leaning Democrat, but on May 24, I voted on the Republican ballot in Alabamas primary election. The states primaries are open, which means Democrats can request a Republican ballot, and vice versa. Alabama is a deep red state, and I wanted some say in electing the officials who will represent me, because they will almost all certainly be Republican.

And have a say I did: Tom Whatley, the state senator for my district, finished behind Jay Hovey by a single vote. (A hearing on Saturday will determine whether Mr. Hovey will be declared the winner.) I voted for Mr. Hovey because I find Mr. Whatleys policies and legacy so abhorrent. If I hadnt cast my vote on a Republican ballot, the two men would be tied.

The walk from my car to the polling station seemed long because I was 38 weeks pregnant, and the heat of our Southern summer was already in full force.

Mr. Hoveys campaign literature describes him as a conservative, Christian Republican whos going to fight for our children, born and unborn, and protect our Second Amendment rights. And the rest of us meaning the nonconservative, non-Christian citizens of our district can go eat glass, as a friend of mine put it.

In 2019, Alabama enacted a near-total ban on abortion. I drove three friends to the Capitol in Montgomery, an hour away from Auburn, where we protested; the ban was blocked because abortion rights are protected federally. Its likely they wont be for long, that soon Ill live in a state where abortion is largely, if not completely, restricted; a state that will also allow, come January, individuals to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.

Thats a bill Mr. Whatley supported, though our county sheriff came out against it. Id like to think Mr. Hovey would not support such dangerous idiocy, but I might be kidding myself.

Mr. Whatley seemed to forget, as a lot of the politicians here do, that he represents me and my family, along with my conservative Christian neighbors. But I think Democrats in Washington have forgotten they represent Alabamians, too.

My thinking on why were in the situation were in where 61 percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, yet that access may soon to be taken away has changed greatly since I moved to the Deep South from Missouri, nearly seven years ago. Democrats have ignored this state, and its neighbors, for decades. I have heard some of them describe people here as ignorant, backward and deplorable. I cant tell you how many times people who live in big, blue cities have blinked in amazement when I tell them I live in Alabama, or that I like it. That surprise is its own kind of ignorance.

And I do like it. I think its valuable to live in a place where everyone doesnt think exactly the same as I do, but beyond that, I love the natural beauty of the South, the friendliness, the food. The stories. The South has flaws, but so does every place. Every time I write an essay about my home I get hate mail. Its less directed at me and more directed at the South a place that I am sometimes told should no longer exist. Its easy to write off an entire region from afar; less easy when you live here.

Theres so much beauty in rural Alabama, and it often abuts terrible poverty. A brilliantly hued hydrangea next to a trailer with blacked-out windows. A row of abandoned old houses next to a field of unmown wildflowers. I do believe that Democratic policies are friendlier to the poor, but how would you know that if you live in a trailer without running water or internet in the middle of a state that has long been out of play for Democratic candidates in national elections? (The victory by a Democrat, Doug Jones, in the U.S. Senate special election in 2017 was anomalous; three years later he was beaten by a Republican former college football coach with no political experience.)

I understand why Democratic presidential candidates wouldnt want to waste time and money campaigning here Alabama feels as if it belongs to Republicans. This is a state with three abortion clinics; as of 2017, there were 113 of them in New York.

The afternoon of the primary in May, my parents came over to watch my children so my husband and I could go to my final ultrasound. I am considered high risk because Im 40 and so during the last weeks of my pregnancy I was closely monitored. There is no doubt in my mind I received excellent care. There is also no doubt in my mind that care for me and other women will be compromised if abortion rights are dismantled. Women would seek out unsafe abortions. Certain forms of birth control might be made illegal, a miscarriage might be dangerously drawn out really, the possibilities are endless.

Your body does not feel like your own at the end of a pregnancy. My stomach was so large it looked otherworldly, especially when the baby inside moved. I was exhausted and swollen. My mind didnt feel particularly like my own, either. My thinking was scattered, my attention span short. This will be my last pregnancy. I feel lucky to experience it.

But that feeling luck, as if Im the witness to some kind of magic, the magic that produces a human from a womb can exist, and does, alongside my belief that its barbaric to deny women the choice of whether they want to carry a child in the first place.

I can believe in the ideals of the Democratic Party while believing that the party has, in certain respects, lost its way; I can become enraged at its recent, hollow attempt to codify abortion rights into federal law. The partys leadership seems to be looking at this moment as a way to improve its chances in the midterms.

I look at this moment quite differently. I think of all the poor women who live in this state, the women who will disproportionately be forced to carry pregnancies they do not want, who cannot afford to travel to the nearest clinic that legally provides abortion. Is it nave to wonder why Democrats at the national level didnt try harder to provide easier access to abortion in red states when they could have? Why dont elected officials truly serve both the people who vote for them and the people who dont? That these questions seem nave, that I already know the answers, doesnt make them any less pressing.

I read the earliest news of the school shooting in Texas while scrolling through my phone in the ultrasound clinics waiting room, where my husband and I saw the first images of our childs face, rendered in 4-D. By the time I gave birth, a week later, the same arguments that always play out between right and left after mass shootings were playing out again. Nothing had changed. Usually I ignore mass shootings, because they seem like the price of living in this country. Its harder to do when the victims are children.

Impossible, one might say.

Anton DiSclafani is the author of the novels The After Party and The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, and an associate professor of creative writing at Auburn University.

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Opinion | How the Abortion and Gun Debates Look From Alabama - The New York Times