New York: A Second-Amendment-Free Zone

Will New York ever accept that it’s subject to the Second Amendment? And that the article is a civil liberty: the right of the people to keep and bear arms? Mayor Adams’ defiance today of a federal judge over the Times Square “Gun Free Zone” is shocking. It suggests that Hizzoner and other Democrats are determined to mount “massive resistance” of the kind the South once used to defy Brown v. Board of Education.Following Brown, Southern segregationists refused to accept the Supreme Court’s decision that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause forbade segregation of public schools. New York’s Democrats similarly refuse to take seriously the Supreme Court case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. That case found that the Second Amendment forbade New York to maintain its strict gun licensing regime, a de facto handgun ban.Empire State law required New Yorkers to convince a state official that they needed to be able to carry a handgun. “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in Bruen. Yet Governor Hochul and the Albany Democrats proceeded to replace the law that was struck down with new restrictions.The hastily-written law, passed just weeks after Bruen, sought to replace the former “proper cause” standard to obtain a gun license with a new series of requirements including having applicants prove their “good moral character” and state review of applicants’ social media accounts. The law also imposed a slew of limits on where New Yorkers could travel if they were lucky enough to get a gun permit, or which stores they could enter.A federal judge at Syracuse, Glenn T. Suddaby of the Northern District, had already noted his constitutional skepticism of this law in September. On Thursday he blocked enforcement of many of its provisions — including New York’s ham-fisted attempt to cordon off a large swath of Midtown West as a Times Square “Gun Free Zone.” New York failed to show a historic precedent for barring guns in such a large public area, Judge Suddaby ruled. Attorney General Letitia James yesterday appealed Judge Suddaby’s ruling. That keeps the law active pending a decision by the riders of the Second Circuit. Yet Mayor Adams took a different approach. Faced with the finding that the Times Square “Gun Free Zone” violated the Second Amendment, Mayor Adams this morning signed into law a city council bill defying Judge Sudabby’s ruling.“Today we enshrine in law that Times Square is a gun-free zone,” Mayor Adams declared. His demarche reflects a brazenness on a par with that displayed by the erstwhile governor of Alabama, George Wallace. A lawyer for the city took refuge in the technicality of the pending appeal and observed that until the courts “make some further determination, we will continue to enforce the law.” In short, they’re going to pretend Judge Suddaby’s ruling never happened. That wasn’t how Democrats responded when another federal district judge, Shira Scheindlin, with the same authority as Judge Suddaby, found the NYPD’s policy of stop, question, and frisk to be “unconstitutional.” She cited “widespread Fourth Amendment violations,” and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Though New York dropped its appeal of her ruling, the riders of the Second Circuit removed her from the case for impartiality.The riders also blocked reforms she ordered and sent the case back down to the district court for review. That didn’t stop Mayor DeBlasio from bragging how upon taking office, “we drove down the unconstitutional stop-and-frisk deeply.” He dropped the case, leaving Judge Scheindlin’s ruling unexamined. Secretary Clinton condemned President Trump’s support of “stop-and-frisk” in 2016, noting in a debate it “was found to be unconstitutional.” It’s not surprising for Democrats to hold fast to the Constitution when it suits their political purposes and to ignore it — or defy it — when it doesn’t. That’s what’s happening in New York today, and in other states trying to evade the broad affirmation of freedom vouchsafed by the Supreme Court in Bruen. Will the Supreme Court need to rule again to make clear to them that the Second Amendment is indeed part of the Constitution?

New York: A Second-Amendment-Free Zone

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