Sunday, June 26, 2022

On Thursday this here undersigned wondered at tth ledgerdemain of SCOTUS in its 2A case overruling a NY gun regulation. How was it that SCOTUS could read this,

Amendment II United States Constitution

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.

 

as this,

The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.


Yesterday the NYT Editorial Board wrote on the SCOTUS New York gun ruling,

“(It was only in 2008, with its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, that conservatives on the court divined an individual right to bear arms hidden somewhere in the 27 words of the Second Amendment.)”

In 2008:

In a radical break from 70 years of Supreme Court precedent, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, declared that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to bear arms for nonmilitary uses, even though the amendment clearly links the right to service in a “militia.”...

...the court’s 5-to-4 decision says that individuals have a constitutional right to keep guns in their homes for self-defense. But that’s a sharp reversal for the court: as early as 1939, it made clear that the Second Amendment only protects the right of people to carry guns for military use in a militia.

In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens was right when he said that the court has now established “a new constitutional right” that creates a “dramatic upheaval in the law.”

...
The gun lobby will now trumpet this ruling as an end to virtually all gun restrictions, anywhere, at all times.
...
...it was not calling into question...bans on gun possession...in “sensitive places” like schools and government buildings.

That last part is the final indignity of the decision: when the justices go to work at the Supreme Court, guns will still be banned. When most Americans show up at their own jobs, they will not have that protection. 

This audaciously harmful decision, which hands the far right a victory it has sought for decades, is a powerful reminder of why voters need to have the Supreme Court firmly in mind when they vote for the president this fall.


☝🏻