ANTI-GUN FORCES WON’T REST UNTIL SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT IS ERASED FROM MEMORY

PART TWO

SUPREME COURT MAJORITY JOINS FORCES WITH SECOND AMENDMENT FOES TO CHIP AWAY AT  NATURAL GOD-GIVEN RIGHT.

As reported in the leftist periodical Newsweek, on March 27, 2018———

“Young activists calling for more gun control legislation should be more ambitious in their nationwide effort and focus on repealing the Second Amendment, according to retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

“In an op-ed published Tuesday in The New York Times, Stevens praised the students and young people who rallied in Washington and around the country over the weekend as part of the March for Our Lives. The demonstration was sparked by the shooting last month at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 people, including 14 students, dead.

Stevens wrote that he had ‘rarely’ seen such a wide scope of ‘civic engagement’ from young people in his lifetime and encouraged their efforts to go even further.

‘That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms,’ Stevens wrote. ‘But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.’”

March 27, 2018 article appearing in Newsweek, citing and extolling retired Justice John Paul Stevens, whose Op-Ed appeared in the NY Times on the same date: March 27, 2018. In that Op-Ed Stevens explicitly calls for repeal of the Second Amendment, an extraordinarily extreme position he alluded to but would dare not expressly assert in his dissent in the 2008 Heller case.

ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT MAINSTREAM MEDIA REJOICES OVER MAJORITY DECISION IN NEW YORK CITY GUN TRANSPORT CASE.

The seditious Anti-Second Amendment Press breathed a collective sigh of relief when the U.S. Supreme Court Majority voted for Respondent, New York City, against the Petitioner, NYSRPA, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., vs. Petitioners V. City Of New York, 590 U.S ____ (2020).* The New York City gun transport case was the first major Second Amendment case to be decided by the High Court since the McDonald case decision ten years earlier.

Although the legal issue, a very narrow one, only implicated the bizarre, abhorrent, draconian, multifaceted, bloated, fascistic, and constantly refined and engineered handgun licensing requirements of New York City, apropos of Section 5-01(a) of Title 38 of the Rules of the City of New York, pertaining to a “premise handgun license,”, the antigun, anti-Second Amendment mob exhibited marked hysteria that the high Court had dared to hear the case at all; concerned that a decision for the NYSRPA against the City would open the floodgates to renewed attacks against restrictive gun regulations across the Country.

The weblog “Bearing Arms,” said, at the time, just before oral argument: “Now, the Court is hearing arguments on the case. That’s more than enough to trigger anti-gunners to completely lose their crap.” 

In its article, Bearing Arms cited an unconscionable, reprehensible story that appeared in the Radical Left weblog news one in which the weblog denounced and denigrated Associate Justice Clarence Thomas for having the audacity to exalt the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Unabashedly mocking the esteemed Associate Justice, as if the writer for news one had any comprehension of U.S. Constitutional Law and of the critical importance of the natural, fundamental, unalienable, immutable right of the people to keep and bear arms to the proper functioning of a free Constitutional Republic, the writer blurted out:

“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been one of the most destructive justices on the court. However, his foolishness is about to hit a new level with the Second Amendment being revisited for the first time on the court in over a decade.

In case you missed it, the Supreme Court is hearing a case to expand gun rights. Yep, you read that right. The majority conservative court might make it easier to have [sic] gun in a time when the majority of Americans are asking for more gun control.

It all has to do with New York City, which has strict rules to protect people from gun violence. In July of 2019, New York City put in a strict rule that limited where New Yorkers could bring their guns, which included transporting legally owned guns outside city limits. No other city or state has this restriction, which was put into place after the horrific shooting of school children in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012.  Twenty-six people, including 20 children between six and seven years old, were killed.

Well, Clarence Thomas isn’t happy and wants more people to have guns. The Washington Post reports, ‘Justice Clarence Thomas has complained that the lower courts have been too willing to uphold gun restrictions, accusing the courts of treating the Second Amendment as a ‘second-class right.’

The Washington Post also asserts, ‘These justices apparently want to adopt a stricter test for courts to apply in Second Amendment cases, making it harder for gun laws to survive a legal challenge. If the court follows suit in the New York case, recent reforms such as red flag laws and universal background checks could be imperiled.’

Many states have made their own changes to their gun laws, which the federal government has failed to do. However, if the Supreme Court finds that New York City went too far with the latest restriction, this could be a serious blow to gun advocacy groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, March for Our Lives, Moms Demand Action, and for the thousands of people.

Leave it up to Clarence Thomas to be on the wrong side of history.”

“Protect people from gun violence”— by removing the most effective means, i.e., a gun,’ with which the average, rational, law-abiding person might capably protect him or herself from a vicious predator? “Wrong side of history”— (i.e., revisionist history) because Justice Thomas defends our Nation’s cherished Bill of Rights?

And Fox19 now, noted, after the New York City gun transport case decision came down:

“The anti-climactic end to the Supreme Court case is a disappointment to gun rights advocates and relief to gun control groups who thought a conservative Supreme Court majority fortified by two appointees of President Donald Trump, Justices Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, might use the case to expand on landmark decisions from a decade ago that established a right under the Second Amendment to keep a gun at home for self-defense.

Lower courts upheld the regulation, but the Supreme Court’s decision early in 2019 to step into the case signaled a revived interest in gun rights from a court with two new justices.

Officials at both the city and state level scrambled to find a way to remove the case from the justices’ grasp. Not only did the city change its regulation to allow licensed gun owners to transport their weapons to locations outside New York’s five boroughs, but the state enacted a law barring cities from imposing the challenged restrictions.

Those moves failed to get the court to dismiss the case before arguments in December, and gun control advocates worried that the court might adopt the reasoning Kavanaugh used in a 2011 opinion in his former job as a Court of Appeals judge. There, he wrote, gun laws “that are not longstanding or sufficiently rooted in text, history, and tradition are not consistent with the Second Amendment individual right.” 

Anti-Second Amendment foes need not have worried. But most Americans do need to worry about the future of Americans’ natural, fundamental, unalienable, immutable God-given right to keep and bear arms.

The New York City gun transport case provides Americans with a blueprint for assessing the predilections of U.S. Supreme Court Justices on matters pertaining to the Second Amendment.

First, the liberal wing of the High Court—comprising, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Steven Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—abhors the Second Amendment. The liberal wing will routinely, if not invariably, rule in favor of Government actions that, on their face, infringe the core of the right. The liberal wing will contort the law to find Government actions constitutional that are clearly unconstitutional and that tend to weaken our fundamental, natural rights and liberties. The liberal wing will continue to demonstrate little reluctance in subordinating the U.S. Constitution and U.S. case law precedent to the dictates of international norms and standards that stand in marked conflict to our system of laws and jurisprudence.

Second, the conservative wing of the High Court—comprising, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch—in the mold of the late, brilliant and esteemed Justice, Antonin Scalia, will continue to demonstrate great deference to our Constitution, and will, consistent with their Oath, always strive to preserve and strengthen our natural rights and liberties.

Third, Chief Justice Roberts cannot and should not be considered a Judicial conservative. He does not exemplify those Justices of the conservative wing of the Court. Even the expression, Judicial ‘moderate’ may not be an accurate descriptor for him. He does not exhibit the appropriate deference to the Second Amendment as now exemplified in having sided, sans a qualified concurring opinion, with the decision of the liberal—dare we say, increasingly, ‘radical’—wing of the High Court. Justice Roberts will continue to see-saw between the two wings of the Court. But do not expect the Chief Justice to treat our Bill of Rights with deep, abiding respect and reverence.

Fourth, prior to the decision in the New York gun transport case, one would have reasonably thought that Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the newest member of the Court—as of the posting of this article—would exhibit the same deference to the Bill of Rights as those Justices comprising the conservative wing of the Court. Certainly, given Justice Kavanaugh’s comprehensive, well-reasoned, and well-written dissent in Heller II, one would have expected Justice Kavanaugh to express the same desire for consistency and detail in his written opinions as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice that he had exhibited as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Sadly, that does not appear to be the case. Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring in the New York City gun transport case appears oddly dull, imprecise, even apologetic in tone. And the decision is not consistent with his dissent in Heller II.

Of course, Justice Kavanaugh’s decision would not have changed the outcome of the case, but it does give one pause. For, if that concurring opinion serves as an indication of what we might expect in the future from this Associate Justice, our sacred Second Amendment—along with our other fundamental rights and liberties—may well be in jeopardy; all the more so if the presumptive Democrat Party nominee for U.S. President, Joe Biden, actually defeats Donald Trump in November. That happenstance would be the manifestation of our Nation’s worst nightmare.

Justice Kavanaugh’s jurisprudential philosophy remains at this point inscrutable and that is not a good thing. In the next several segments, we attempt to unpack Kavanaugh’s concurring, along with a review of past Second Amendment cases that the High Court denied cert, and a close look at the issue of mootness, as the majority decision in the New York City case wasn’t consistent with Supreme Court precedence; not even close.

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*SCOTUSblog Holding and Judgment:

Holding: Petitioners’ claim for declaratory and injunctive relief with respect to the City’s old rule on transporting firearms is moot, and any claim for damages with respect to that rule may be addressed in the first instance by the court of appeals and the district court on remand.

Judgment: Vacated and remanded in a per curiam opinion on April 27, 2020. Justice Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion. Justice Alito filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Gorsuch joined in full and Justice Thomas joined except for Part IV-B.

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Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.