Opinion
“Free” Press Flails Wildly As High Court Takes Up Restrictive Gun Measure.
New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- Much to the consternation of anti-gun proponents, main stream media and Democrat politicians the U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear a Second Amendment case.
On recently the High Court granted the petition in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, New York, 883 F.3d 45 (2nd Cir. 2018), cert. Granted, 2019 U.S. LEXIS 734 (U.S. Jan. 22, 2019) (No. 18-280). This marks the first time the High Court has granted a petition in a straightforward Second Amendment case since handing down its rulings in the seminal cases District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 780, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010).
The central issue, as presented on The Supreme Court’s weblog, is “whether New York City’s ban on transporting a licensed, locked and unloaded handgun to a home or shooting range outside city limits is consistent with the Second Amendment, the commerce clause and the constitutional right to travel.”
The City’s restriction is not only inconsistent with the High Court rulings in Heller and McDonald; it is patently ludicrous. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit should have struck down the measure. Instead, the Second Circuit affirmed the lower U.S. District Court’s decision, finding for the City, ignoring the Heller and McDonald case rulings and legal standards for review of Second Amendment cases. The Second Circuit bought into the age-old disturbingly familiar and empty shibboleth: “public safety concerns” in ruling for the City against Petitioners. The U.S. Supreme Court wasn’t impressed and granted review of the Second Circuit decision.
In requesting the U.S. Supreme Court to grant the writ for certiorari, Petitioners made a compelling case, stating in pertinent part:
“New York City flatly prohibits its residents from removing their lawfully purchased and duly registered handguns from the city limits, even to transport them (unloaded, and locked up) to second homes at which they are constitutionally entitled to possess them, or to out-of-city shooting ranges or competitions at which they are constitutionally entitled to hone their safe and effective use. That prohibition does not even make sense on its own terms. It has the perverse consequences of forcing New Yorkers to leave their handguns behind in their vacant residences whenever they leave the city for an extended period of time. And far from achieving the City’s professed interest in decreasing the amount of time that its residents spend transporting their locked and unloaded firearms to and from shooting ranges (an activity that the City made no serious effort to demonstrate poses any meaningful safety risk), the ban actually forces New Yorkers to spend more time traveling to the paucity of inconvenient in-city shooting ranges. Indeed, the only plausible theory under which the City’s novel transport ban could be understood to further its professed public safety interest in decreasing the transport of unloaded, locked-up firearms is if the ban discourages people from transporting their handguns to shooting ranges at all. But it would be utterly irrational for the City to enact a restriction for the express purpose of making it harder for individuals to gain proficiency in the use of the handguns that the Constitution entitles them to possess. More to the point, a restriction that is expressly designed to make it harder to exercise core Second Amendment rights cannot plausibly withstand any level of constitutional scrutiny. Courts would not countenance for one moment a prohibition on leaving city limits to get an abortion—and certainly not if there were only seven locations in a city of 8.5 million people at which to obtain one. A prohibition on leaving city limits to exercise core Second Amendment rights should fare no better.”
Respondent, New York City, was furious the high Court would dare second guess the Constitutionality of the City’s firearms’ measures. The Supreme Court never did so before, and the City didn’t want the Court to do so now. It didn’t take long for anti-gun proponents’ echo chamber in the mainstream media to offer its concerns and to issue dire prognostications.
The New York Times, quoting one antigun activist, Michael Waldman, reported:
“This is the first case but not the last case where at least four justices open the way to a major ruling that could limit gun safety laws.”
In that same NY Times article, The New York City mayor also chimed in:
“Mayor Bill de Blasio, responding to a reporter’s question about the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case, said at a news conference on Tuesday that the city would vigorously defend its law.
“We, every single day, are working to make this the safest big city in America,” he said. “We need the laws that we have that protect against guns being on our streets and we will fight to protect ourselves, that’s the bottom line.”
The New York Times also cites a Constitutional law professor, Adam Winkler who openly shows his aversion to the Second Amendment. The NY times closed the article with Winkler’s sarcastic comment: “The Second Amendment is alive and well in the Roberts court.”
Reading comments from antigun zealots, one might think an unfavorable ruling by the High Court would cause mass gunplay on the streets of the City. Antigun zealots avoid drawing a bright line distinction between criminal access to and misuse of firearms, on the one hand, and the free exercise of the right to keep and bear arms by law-abiding citizens, on the other. This is borne out by the proliferation of anti-gun laws in this Country and the speciousness of the arguments made to support them.
USA Today, quoting from Respondent City’s Brief, notes:
“Unlike golf clubs and musical instruments, firearms present public safety risks that the city has a legitimate interest in protecting against. . . . ‘Limiting their possession and use in public minimizes the risk of gun violence.’”
Now really! Bringing up “golf clubs” and “musical instruments”? What does a driving iron or a saxophone or bassoon have to do with the best-recognized means of self-defense, a firearm? The incongruity of the comparison is glaring.
Further, the descriptor, ‘public safety,’ through overuse, is mere cliché. It has lost import purport. The phrase continues as a rhetorical flourish, appearing in legal briefs and Court opinions as well as in political commentary and political sermons. It does a disservice to the citizenry of this Country.
Those who rely primarily or solely on “public safety concerns” to make a case for restrictive gun measures demonstrate intellectual laziness. It is mere make weight, in the absence of explication and rigorous argument. Reliance on it to support draconian gun measures is intended to appeal less to one’s reason and more to one’s passions. The goal of most restrictive gun legislation is to separate law-abiding citizens from their firearms. Restrictive gun measures, targeting millions of law-abiding gun owners, do not enhance public safety. These gun measures make the public decidedly less safe—defenseless in the face of ever more crime.
Such reprehensible, irresponsible Governmental action is directed to destroying the right of the people to keep and bear arms. But now the City and anti-gun proponents around the Country are worried, as they contemplate U.S. Supreme Court review of the New York City firearms’ transport measure. They know this draconian measure cannot survive high Court scrutiny. So, the media sounds the alarm with inaccurate, exaggerated reports of danger if the City’s firearms’ transport measure is struck down.
Even the conservative, staid, Wall Street Journal report is misleading. The reporter, Jess Bravin, taking his cue from The New York Times, suggests the case will radically expand Heller and McDonald. It won’t.
A reversal of the Second Circuit decision would mean only that the City’s firearms’ transportation rules contradict high Court precedent, on core Second Amendment matters, and, for that reason, must be struck down. The Wall Street Journal, though, doesn’t see it that way, writing:
“The case, a review of New York City regulations that curtail the transportation of guns, offers the court’s newly bolstered conservative majority an opportunity to expand the constitutional right to bear arms beyond a pair of decisions that, beginning in 2008, found the Second Amendment allows individuals to keep handguns in the home for self-defense.”
To bolster the point, the Wall Street Journal, like The New York Times, quotes the same source, Adam Winkler. In that WSJ article, Winkler says, “At issue is ‘the right to have a gun in public. It’s the biggest open question in Second Amendment law today.’”
These remarks, cited in the Wall Street Journal, are article false. Striking down an unconstitutional firearms’ measure isn’t equivalent to expanding a Constitutional right. Rather, an unconstitutional restriction on an enumerated right unduly impairs the fair exercise of a fundamental right.
Transporting a firearm, in public, in a locked case, ammunition separated from a firearm, is hardly the same as carrying a firearm at the ready, anyway. So, Winkler is wrong. At issue, here, is not the right to have a gun in public. Transporting a firearm in a locked container is not what is meant by having a firearm in public, namely, at the ready. Winkler erroneously conflates these two notions.
But, transporting a firearm in a case, in public, does present a particular danger of its own: one of theft of a firearm.
Such a requirement is also strange and unsettling as the City of New York would permit a licensee the use of a firearm for self-defense at home, but preclude the holder of a restricted “premises” license access to the best means available for self-defense when outside the home. Why should a law-abiding American citizen be limited to a location where a firearm may be available for self-defense? Why must our Nation’s citizenry suffer “Second [and First] Amendment free zones?” Would the framers of our Bill of Rights tolerate this? Indeed, it is often in public, especially in urban areas, where a person is more exposed; where a person’s life and safety is more at risk. It will be interesting to see whether the high Court broaches these matters in its opinion.
The Arbalest Quarrel will stay abreast and offer detailed analyses of the arguments presented in forthcoming articles. We will also stay attuned to media accounts. We expect the Governor of New York, the architect of the awful New York Safe Act, the smugly self-assured and virulent opponent of the Second Amendment, Andrew Cuomo–a person never at a loss for words–to sound off at some point on the New York City case.
As New York has always led the assault on the fundamental, unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms, it is only fitting for the U.S. Supreme Court to take New York to task. For far too long, people like Andrew Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg, Bill DeBlasio, and others, have held sway over the American citizen’s most sacred right—a right intrinsic to one’s being. These politicians relegate a sacred right to mere privilege—a privilege Government may grant at its discretion and revoke at will.
New York’s myriad, loathsome firearms’ laws, codes, rules, regulations, and procedures must all be scrutinized by the High Court. That is something the City doesn’t want. But it is happening, nonetheless. It must happen. New York City, a bastion of the new Left ideology has turned away from the principles reflected in the Nation’s Bill of Rights.
The Times Ledger reports—and it is mystifying to consider in light of the Leftist leaning of the City today—that New York City was, for five years, from 1785 through 1790, the seat of the Nation’s Capital. It was here in 1789 that the Nation’s first President, George Washington, swore an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States and to safeguard the fundamental, unalienable rights and liberties of the American people, embodied in that sacred document.
But, a new, alien, radical, virulent Socialist belief system and agenda has taken over the City, insinuating itself inexorably and insidiously in the lives of the City’s inhabitants. Socialist ideas and precepts–grounded on inherent distrust of the American citizenry–are painfully evident in the City’s myriad, convoluted, restrictive, unconstitutional firearms’ codes, rules, regulations, and procedures, and in the State’s draconian firearms’ laws. Leftist propaganda is proselytized to the residents of New York, daily. But, a day of reckoning is at hand, both for New York City and for jurisdictions like it, around the Country. It’s about time!
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Despite media lies, New York City does not HAVE any “gun safety” laws… they have “gun control” laws. Entirely different animal.
New York and Calif. have finally gone two far with their incursions restricting a constitutional right. This was bound to happen sooner or later. The Dems and anti gunners should have quit while they were ahead, they are of course too stupid to do that.
One concern I do have is that NYC could overturn its law and render the case moot, so it doesn’t get heard. There are some groups pushing for this because they are concerned SCOTUS’s ruling will have implications for gun control across the country.
I actually think this case has little to do with NYC’s draconian transport laws and more to do with the “test” applied by the courts to determine if a gun control law is constitutional. They claim to apply “intermediate scrutiny” (they don’t) and every laws passes. What has the liberals clutching their pearls is the idea that the court could invalidate this test, which would open the door to overturning other gun control laws.
Even if the plaintiffs prevail before the US Supreme Court in this appeal, the amount of gun rights gained is minuscule. What is needed is a major case pertaining to “shall issue” to really shake American jurisprudence in direction of civilian gun rights. I am afraid, though, that the SCOTUS, by accepting this case, is just throwing our side a small bone. The real result, in the end, might be a great disappointment.
I only hope that the MSM and the Demo-Communist Party are choking on the idea of freedom. I know they detest the idea that we have freedom to own, freedom to use, freedom to carry and freedom to defend ourselves. To defend ourselves from thieves and thugs. To defend ourselves from a tyrannical government if need be. Hope it never comes to that. But if the Demo-Communist totalitarians have their way, it will.