A Defeat for the Second Amendment

Another day, another setback for the Second Amendment at the Supreme Court. The high court’s decision on Monday to uphold limits imposed by New York Democrats on the right to keep and bear arms in the Empire State follows a recent ruling backing federal regulations on “ghost guns.” New York’s restrictions are all the more galling for coming, as they do, after the court’s landmark vindication, in the Bruen case, of the Second Amendment.Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen struck down the state’s decades-old Sullivan law, which made it nearly impossible for law-abiding persons to carry a gun. The ink had hardly dried on the decision when Democrats passed new restrictions on guns. “Not since Governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door has there been such a gesture of resistance to federal authority,” these columns griped.New York’s end-run around the Constitution after Bruen reflects a divide in America over the right to bear arms. The left tends to view it as a privilege to be bestowed on a select few. These columns are among those who contend that the rights secured by the Second Amendment are as critical to American liberty — if not more so — as those vouchsafed in the First Amendment, say, or any of the other freedoms protected in the Rights Bill. The Sun’s view echoes that of Justice Thomas’s predecessor on the high court, Justice Joseph Story, who saw “the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms” as “the palladium of the liberties of a republic.” That, Story reasoned, is because “it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers.” Too, Story concluded, “even if these are successful in the first instance,” the right will “enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”Justice Thomas in Bruen explained that the Second Amendment is not “a second-class right.” Yet the Democrats at Albany proceeded to show their contempt for the palladium of Americans’ liberties by stifling the exercise of that right. This was partly by establishing a new threshold to apply for a gun permit. New Yorkers were asked to hand over their social media accounts for inspection, and to prove to state authorities their “good moral character.”Imagine, by comparison, state courts, say, requiring criminal defendants to prove their moral caliber before they qualified for a jury trial, guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment. Or the organizers of a political protest being asked by local police to demonstrate their personal worthiness to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech. The limits on the right to bear arms are just as absurd — and as dangerous to our democracy.As Justice Thomas put it, there is “no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.” New York Democrats, too, imposed a new and expansive roster of “sensitive places” where citizens were barred from carrying their firearms. Justice Thomas’s opinion had foreseen such geographical limits, based on the historic record, on carrying guns.He reasoned that “schools and government buildings,” along with “legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses,” had typically barred firearms. New York Democrats took advantage of this provision to declare a long list of venues “gun free zones” — including a vastly expanded Times Square district that covers much of Midtown. It put gun owners at risk of accidentally committing a felony by, say, entering a store, or crossing the wrong street.Gun owners took to federal court to protest these limits on their rights. Riders of the Second Circuit tweaked the law — dropping, say, the requirement to present social media accounts for inspection — but largely upheld the measure. The Supreme Court’s ruling Monday denying review of that decision in Antonyuk v. James rewards the Democrats’ defiance not only of the high court’s authority, but of the plain meaning of the Constitution.

A Defeat for the Second Amendment

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