SCOTUS: Paving The Road to Slaughter with Good Intentions

 Today in Highland Park, Illinois a miscreant shot from a rooftop into a July 4 parade crowd.  Six dead and dozens wounded.  Twenty-two year old “Bobby” E. Crimo III had no need for a gun.  Yet he had a legally acquired assault rifle which he used with deadly effect, killing six at current count and injuring dozens.

But last month the Supreme Court, 6-3, voided a New York law requiring demonstration of special need to buy a handgun.  But since yesterday's killer  used a high powered semi-automatic weapon of war, critics of Second Amendment rights may find themselves the objects of Samuel Alito's scorn.  In New York State Rifle Alito wrote in a concurring opinion:

Why, for example, does the dissent think it is relevant to recount the mass shootings that have occurred in recent years?  Does the dissent think that laws like New York’s prevent or deter such atrocities? 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.

Well, to me the fact that Crimo could do more damage with an assault rifle is not a reason to void New York's century old gun control laws. To me it is reason to extend them, not gut them.  But then again I think that judges should consider more than the crystalline logic of the rules which they themselves  have created.

The measures proposed as somehow within reach are almost token, though it is possible that the latest homicidal maniac would have been tripped up by the red flag provisions of the pending Senate compromise.   Once we recognize that half of gun deaths are suicides, and that there are more guns than people thoughts should turn to drastic measures, not lesser. Chief among them should be the outlawing of semi-automatic weapons like the trendy AR 15, but most importantly a massive nationwide gun buyback, and rigorous permit system.  But for the latter we will have to expand and pack the Supreme Court like the Republicans have done.

- GWC

NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., ET AL., PETITIONERS v. KEVIN P. BRUEN, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS SUPERINTENDENT OF NEW YORK STATE POLICE, ET AL. 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT [June 23, 2022] 

JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court. In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570 (2008), and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742 (2010), we recognized that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense. In this case, petitioners and respondents agree that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense. We too agree, and now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.