Supreme Court’s Duty: Preserve the 2nd Amendment – New York Needs a Course Correction

Opinion: If the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms falls, the Republic falls with it.

New York – From the moment the Constitution took effect in 1788, sharp-eyed Anti-Federalists warned it was incomplete without a Bill of Rights.

They understood a timeless truth: tyranny is inherent in all governments. Without an explicit safeguard for the People’s Natural Law Right to armed self-defense, the young Republic would one day be at risk of the very despotism it had just overthrown.

The Federalists placed faith in the structure of the Constitution—its checks and balances—to restrain power. The Anti-Federalists trusted the American people themselves, armed and resolute. Both agreed on one point:

…a well-armed citizenry is the ultimate “fail-safe” should those checks fail.

That is why the Second Amendment’s command is so clear—“shall not be infringed.” This was no mere hunting clause. It was an unambiguous guarantee that neither the Federal Government nor the States could strip the People of their most vital defense: the ability to meet force with force if tyranny ever took hold.

Yet for more than a century, political actors have chipped away at this bulwark.

The first major national attack came with the 1934 National Firearms Act, upheld by a Supreme Court that ignored the Second Amendment’s plain text. Hostile states had already been at work, as with New York’s 1911 Sullivan Act, inserting licensing schemes between the citizen and his rights.

The Framers would have seen such laws for what they are—government placing itself above the Sovereign People. Even landmark victories like District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), McDonald v. Chicago (2010), and NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022) have not stopped certain states from defying the Constitution outright.

New York offers the prime example. Within weeks of losing in Bruen, Governor Kathy Hochul signed new carry restrictions designed to nullify the ruling. Federal courts have split, but when the Antonyuk case reached the Supreme Court earlier this year, the Justices refused to hear it. That silence not only leaves unconstitutional laws in place, it signals to hostile jurisdictions that defiance will be tolerated.

The Court’s role here is not optional. The Framers placed the Second Amendment side by side with free speech because they knew arms and ideas together are the twin pillars of liberty. The armed citizenry is not an 18th-century relic—it is a living, breathing check on despotism. Without it, the People are left to depend entirely on the “protection” of the very government that may one day seek to dominate them.

The reality is plain: Tens of millions of well-armed Americans with a capacity to be very dangerous remain the single most formidable obstacle to tyranny. Those who wish to dismantle the Republic know this. That is why every major push toward centralized, unaccountable power is accompanied by efforts to disarm the citizenry—whether through legislation, regulation, or judicial erosion.

This is why the Supreme Court cannot act in fits and starts. When it finally affirmed the Second Amendment’s individual nature in Heller, extended it to the States in McDonald, and reasserted its full scope in Bruen, it was fulfilling its constitutional duty. But failing to enforce those rulings—allowing states to invent workarounds and daring the People to spend years in court—renders those victories hollow.

The erosion of the Second Amendment will not come by one dramatic act. It will come slowly, like the proverbial frog in the pot, until the right exists only on paper and the People’s sovereignty withers away.

The Framers warned us: a government powerful enough to protect everything is powerful enough to take everything. The Second Amendment is the one right that secures all others. If the Court does not defend it with clarity and courage, the balance between the People and their government will be lost—and with it, the Republic itself.

The time for judicial half-measures is over. The Court must confront rogue states and overreaching federal agencies head-on, compel compliance with the Constitution, and remind every branch of government that the American People are the sole and supreme sovereign of this Nation.

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