The six conservative justices on the Supreme Court are not even trying to hide the fact that they want us dead. First, it was the leaked draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which will overturn Roe v. Wade and make abortion illegal in about half the states in the country. (And that’s just the starting point of states with pre-existing “trigger laws” for just such a scenario.) Not content to simply play the long game with our lives, those same six justices are now making sure we feel our lives being threatened on a more immediate level and have stripped away some monumental gun safety protections.
There’s no doubt that the abortion ruling alone will have a devastating effect on our health and safety. In addition to the extreme mental health toll of being forced into carrying a child to term and/or parenthood, the U.S. already has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country, and banning abortion will undeniably lead to many more entirely preventable deaths. But that wasn’t enough for the court.
Should we be alive? The Supreme Court says “nah,” in a 6-3 decision.
— Kashana (@kashanacauley) June 23, 2022
In the case of New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the court ruled that New York state’s concealed carry law—which requires gun owners to provide a reason showing they have “proper cause” to carry a firearm for self-defense—is unconstitutional. Six states, with a total population of 83 million people, have similar laws, all of which are now void. With his decision, Clarence Thomas just made concealed carry a constitutional right.
And that’s not all. He also wrote that “to justify a firearm regulation the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Meaning, essentially, the only gun regulations that can be imposed are those that could have been in place in the 18th Century. However, Thomas writes, “even though the Second Amendment’s definition of ‘arms’ is fixed according to its historical understanding, that general definition covers modern instruments that facilitate armed self-defense.”
In short: We have to take the opinions of white men from hundreds of years ago regarding muskets and apply them to AR-15s. If you think that sounds ridiculous, Justice Stephen Breyer agrees. In his dissent, he writes, “The Court’s near-exclusive reliance on history is not only unnecessary, it is deeply impractical.” He also lays out the entirely reasonable argument that the “complex problem” of firearm regulation is “one that should be solved by legislatures rather than courts.”
We now have a Supreme Court that is moving every aspect of our society in a radical direction, blowing up any reasonable reading of the Constitution to fit its radical ideological and partisan views. It spits on the actions of legislatures and preempts the other branches. 1
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) June 23, 2022
This decision is a devastating blow to gun safety. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern sums up the massive implications well:
It is difficult to overstate the consequences of Thomas’ decision. In a single opinion, the justice has abolished the ability of courts to consider the real-world impact of firearms when evaluating limitations on their sale and use. No longer may cities and states enact new restrictions motivated by, for example, a surge in mass shootings, and cite the need to protect their residents as justification. All these facts are now immaterial. Any government attempting to impose gun control must scour the history books for some historical analogue. Of course, that analogue might not exist, because modern technology has made guns vastly more powerful and deadly, and the exponential growth in population creates new challenges that were not present hundreds of years ago. And even if the government can find an analogue, it must pass Thomas’ Calvinball test, which dismisses all historical evidence in support of gun restrictions.
Meanwhile, in his own concurring opinion, Samuel Alito decided to go the route of why do we even have laws at all since crimes still happen? “Does the dissent think that laws like New York’s prevent or deter such atrocities?” he wrote. “Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home? And how does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator.”
Weird how these guys love to argue that banning guns won’t stop violent crime but still think banning abortion will keep people from finding ways to terminate pregnancies.
(featured image: Paul Morigi/Getty Images for March For Our Lives)
