Shot in the heart: Supreme Court radically expands gun rights, a decision that will cost lives in New York City and elsewhere


Using a confused reading of history as a crutch, so-called textualist conservatives on the US Supreme Court just codified a cartoon-cut version of the Second Amendment, doing away with the state’s concealed firearms permit system from New York. We won’t be beating around the bush: This will cost the lives of civilians and police, as almost anyone in New York City will now be able to carry a gun. At a time when the proliferation of weapons is already killing a record number of Americans, the almost absolutist right of self-defense that most canonizes will become a right of social suicide.

It is only 27 simple words written in 1789: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, must not be infringed”. Judge Clarence Thomas, written for the majority of six membersblatantly ignores the first clause and translates the second in the most expansive terms imaginable.

With all the incisiveness of a high school student, he states: “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual can exercise only after demonstrating to government officials some special need.” By this principle, almost no weapon can be restricted almost anywhere, as long as a man with his finger on the trigger can credibly assert the need to protect himself. In fact, with more and more Americans carrying more and more weapons, the psychological need to carry ever more powerful weapons only increases.

The scariest thing is that even though the challenge was a New York law, most don’t care about the implications of its absolutism for the nation’s most populous city, which is battling a spike in shootings due in large part to the easy availability of weapons. The word “subway” does not appear once in the 63 pages of Thomas.

It is left for an exasperated Justice Stephen Breyer, dissenting, to ask, “What about the subway, the nightclubs, the movie theaters, and the sports arenas? The Court does not say.” Nor, he points out, do most stoop to dealing with the nature or seriousness of gun violence in the United States, gun violence which, coincidentally, is much, much less serious in states like New York, which have permit systems. more restrictive. New York firearm death rate it is 5.3 per 100,000 inhabitants. Mississippi, Louisiana and Wyoming are all above 25 per 100,000.

Conservatives often revere states’ rights. Here, they delete them. Conservatives often criticize those who speak of a “Living Constitution.” Here, they choose one that gives license to die.

At least most assert the theoretical right of localities to ban public transportation in “sensitive locations” — until the next legal challenge, anyway. New York must immediately designate the subways, buses, places of worship, Times Square, Union Square, Central Park and all other places where large numbers of people gather.

But it will be one thing to put up “no guns” signs in sensitive places and quite another for the Police Department to enforce such restrictions when even ensuring compliance with a mask mandate has been a burden, and the difference between legal and illegal carry . has suddenly become blurry. God help us.

Governor Hochul must immediately recall the Legislature to save what remains of New York’s gun safety regime. And Mayor Adams must meet with his NYPD commissioner to develop a battle plan. The Supreme Court would make our city a free fire zone. We must fight back.



Reference-www.nydailynews.com

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