Supreme Court - NYSRPA v. Bruen - Megathread

Coyote33 said:
Has this happened with any gun law in Massachusetts, ever? Anywhere else? And used this phrase?
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What; did you get jacked up and you're on a never-ending quest for a goose case?

Even town councils say it:

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Coyote33 said:
1656048595360-png.629962
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That's a Scalia quote.

MGnoob said:
As a whole, New York City has a population density of over 28,000 people per square mile.

Why the f*** would you live there?
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Also, I hear the sewer rat tastes like pumpkin pie...

Dadstoys said:
You can stand on the tracks and ignore the train too.
Doesn't mean it won't still run you over . ;)
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See above.
(That's the Meadowlands - not the train from Brewster).
 
whatluck said:
View attachment 629994
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I posted that last night. The DoJ has NEVER issued a statement like that before on a SCotUS ruling and our course the GoPe in the middle of the night under cover of darkness had to have a legislative orgy with the Democrats to give more power to the DoJ to attack the 2A.

Hopefully GOA/FPC/SAF challenges that garbage immediately, gets a nationwide injunction, and Thomas gets to smack down Mitch McConnel's gang of emasculated donkey show loving gimps.
 
Takeaways From The Supreme Court Protection Of Self-Defense
thefederalist.com

6 Takeaways From The Supreme Court Protection Of Self-Defense

The Supreme Court has finally ended its two-decades long punt on Second Amendment jurisprudence, and it's glorious.
thefederalist.com thefederalist.com

1. May-Issue Gun Licensing Regimes Violate the Second Amendment​

In New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, two New Yorkers, Brandon Koch and Robert Nash, along with the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc., sued the superintendent of New York State Police. They challenged the state’s statute that requires a person wishing to carry a firearm outside his home or business for self-defense to obtain a license to carry a concealed weapon. Under the statute, to obtain such a license, the applicant must prove “proper cause exists” for the government to issue the license.

As the Supreme Court summarized, New York’s statute does not define “proper cause,” but state courts have held “that an applicant shows proper cause only if he can ‘demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.’” Merely “living or working in an area ‘noted for criminal activity’ does not suffice.” Rather, New York courts generally require evidence “of particular threats, attacks or other extraordinary danger to personal safety.”

This licensing scheme, as the Supreme Court explained, is called a “may issue” licensing law, because it provides government officials “discretion to deny concealed-carry licenses even when the applicant satisfies the statutory criteria, usually because the applicant has not demonstrated cause or suitability for the relevant license.”

Six jurisdictions have adopted “may issue” schemes in addition to New York: California, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. In contrast, as the Supreme Court explained, “the vast majority of States—43 by our count—are ‘shall issue’ jurisdictions, where authorities must issue concealed-carry licenses whenever applicants satisfy certain threshold requirements, without granting licensing officials discretion to deny licenses based on a perceived lack of need or suitability.”

In yesterday’s decision, the Supreme Court held that New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Second Amendment, applicable to the state by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment and the incorporation doctrine. (For more on the incorporation doctrine, read here.)

That law, the Supreme Court reasoned, unconstitutionally “prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms because New York failed to prove that the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by history,” demonstrates the government may limit the right to carry arms in public to individuals who have “a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.”

While the court’s Thursday decision technically concerned only the New York statute challenged in the lawsuit, the opinion’s analysis applies equally to the “may issue” licensing schemes in force in five other jurisdictions, meaning those will soon fall too.

2. The Supreme Court Is Done Punting on the Second Amendment​

Thursday’s decision in Bruen proves significant beyond the bottom line, however, first because the Supreme Court has finally ended its two-decades-long punt on Second Amendment jurisprudence.

In 2008, the Supreme Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment, which provides, “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” protects “the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” The Heller court further held that an individual’s right exists irrespective of service in a militia, reasoning that the “militia” clause, while explaining a purpose of the protection, did not limit the individual right.

Two years later, the high court in McDonald v. City of Chicago held the Second Amendment “is fully applicable to the States” and state subdivisions such as counties and cities. Accordingly, state and state subdivisions, like the federal government, remain constrained by the national Constitution from infringing on an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.

While Heller and McDonald were landmark Supreme Court decisions and the first Second Amendment cases decided by the high court since 1939, both cases addressed issues that were narrow and limited to whether laws banning or regulating firearms in a person’s home violated the Second Amendment. In both cases, the Supreme Court declared the laws unconstitutional.

But since then, “the Supreme Court has rejected numerous challenges to other laws affecting the right to bear keep and bear arms, taking a nearly universal hands-off approach on the Second Amendment. The rare exception came in 2016, when the court, without a hearing and in an unsigned two-page order, held in Caetano v. Massachusetts that stun guns were protected under the Second Amendment. Unsurprisingly, that decision added little clarity to Second Amendment jurisprudence.”

That hands-off approach continued even while lower federal courts ignored the Supreme Court’s analysis in Heller, which made clear that the Second Amendment protects “firearms commonly used for a lawful purpose.” Thus, for instance, the Supreme Court in 2017 let standthe Fourth Circuit’s holding in Kolbe v. Hogan that semi-automatic rifles are not constitutionally protected “arms,” even though “the prevalence of lawfully used AR-15s and semiautomatic AK-47s clearly meets the Heller standard for garnering Second Amendment protection.”

With the Supreme Court’s silence in the Second Amendment arena came the creation of conflicting standards by the various circuit courts and many unanswered questions. On Thursday, however, the high court spoke, and in a majority opinion joined in full by six justices. That opinion clarified several significant aspects of the scope and protections guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

​

 

3. The Right to Bear Arms Is Not a Second-Class Right​

Justice Thomas, writing for the majority, began the court’s opinion by noting that since Heller and McDonald, the lower courts have “coalesced around a ‘two-step’ framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny.” That framework, in general, began by asking whether the challenged law regulates activity falling outside the scope of the Second Amendment, as originally understood. If outside the scope of the Second Amendment, the regulation passes constitutional muster, and no further analysis is required.

If, however, the regulated activity falls within the general parameters of Second Amendment protection, courts applying the two-step analysis ask “how close the law comes to the core of the Second Amendment right and the severity of the law’s burden on that right.” Here, Justice Thomas noted that “Courts of Appeals generally maintain ‘that the core Second Amendment right is limited to self-defense in the home.’” Other laws affecting the right to bear arms—because they were not considered “core”—received less protection, with lower courts applying “intermediate scrutiny” and considering “whether the Government can show that the regulation is “substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest.”

Thursday’s opinion expressly rejected that two-part approach, stating that “despite the popularity of this two-step approach, it is one step too many.” Instead, the Supreme Court held “that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.” Thus, under Bruen, to survive a Second Amendment challenge, the government must do more than “simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest.” Rather, the government must affirmatively prove “that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

In reaching this conclusion, the Supreme Court stressed that “the constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not “a second-class right,” subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need,” the court noted.

“That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense,” the high court stressed.

4. The Right to Self-Defense Is Not Limited to the Home​

After rejecting the two-step approach to the Second Amendment, the court considered whether New York’s “may issue” permitting regime “was consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” That detailed analysis marched the reader through centuries of history, from medieval England through the early 20th century.

While Justice Thomas’s opinion hit several high points, the “short prologue” he provided to his analysis of the Civil War and antebellum time periods proved most powerful:

Even before the Civil War commenced in 1861, this Court indirectly affirmed the importance of the right to keep and bear arms in public. Writing for the Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857), Chief Justice Taney offered what he thought was a parade of horribles that would result from recognizing that free blacks were citizens of the United States. If blacks were citizens, Taney fretted, they would be entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, including the right ‘to keep and carry arms wherever they went.’ Thus, even Chief Justice Taney recognized (albeit unenthusiastically in the case of blacks) that public carry was a component of the right to keep and bear arms—a right free blacks were often denied in antebellum America.
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From there, the majority opinion in Bruen thoroughly analyzed the “historical tradition of firearm regulation” before holding “the Second Amendment guaranteed to ‘all Americans’ the right to bear commonly used arms in public subject to certain reasonable, well-defined restrictions.” “To confine the right to ‘bear’ arms to the home would nullify half of the Second Amendment’s operative protections,” the court stressed, adding that “confining the right to ‘bear’ arms to the home would make little sense given that self-defense is ‘the central component of the [Second Amendment] right itself,’ and “confrontation can surely take place outside the home.”

In sum, then, the Bruen decision did three important things: First, it expressly rejected the two-part test invented by the lower courts over the 30-some years since Heller and McDonald. Second, the Supreme Court made clear the controlling question is whether the regulation at issue “is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Third, the Bruen court made clear that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms exists outside the home.

(snip)​

 
Meanwhile the bill for the 1000% tax lurks in the background and presumably can be passed. At this point what _wouldn't_ Democrats do in retaliation against firearm owners over the court's decision.
 
amm5061 said:
The wild west argument is such bullshit. Even the actual wild west wasn't the f***ing wild west.

The whole argument is a giant red herring and should be treated as such. No such bloodbath will occur, because there's nothing to actually stop it from happening before this ruling and it only ever happened in democrat-controlled shitholes like Chicago. So where's the real wild f***ing west?
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Logical fallacy Appeal to Emotion. Used when one's position is weaker than a Joe Biden handshake.
 
Mesatchornug said:
LittleCalm said:
Except the wait times are about 5-6 months and they urge you to submit renewal 3 months prior. Crazy. One thing that seems clear from Bruen is that the court probably would uphold a basic, objective licensing scheme and would not require states to have constitutional carry. So the next battles will be over processing times and fees. Fees also invoke the 14A issue as discussed above.
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Based on the commentary, I'm not sure it's clear they wouldn't find against licensing altogether. I agree that fees and delays are the next obvious place to attack.
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Footnote 9 of the decision, citations omitted, highlights mine:
To be clear, nothing in our analysis should be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality of the 43 States’ “shall-issue” licensing regimes, under which “a general desire for self-defense is sufficient to obtain a [permit].” Because these licensing regimes do not require applicants to show an atypical need for armed self-defense, they do not necessarily prevent “law-abiding, responsible citizens” from exercising their Second Amendment right to public carry. Rather, it appears that these shall-issue regimes, which often require applicants to undergo a background check or pass a firearms safety course, are designed to ensure only that those bearing arms in the jurisdiction are, in fact, “law-abiding, responsible citizens". And they likewise appear to contain only “narrow, objective, and definite standards” guiding licensing officials, rather than requiring the “appraisal of facts, the exercise of judgment, and the formation of an opinion" -- features that typify proper-cause standards like New York’s. That said, because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends, we do not rule out constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.​
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Thomas must have been writing this for years, considering the number of conditions he considered. Now, getting the lower courts to actually apply the ruling may be a bigger issue.
 
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Damn. I can't keep up. 7 pages overnight. LOL

eboos said:
Wouldn't "shall issue" and "shall issue without restrictions" be one and the same under this cases analysis? If an applicant does not need to show extraordinary circumstances to justify their need for a license and the discretionary approval/denial is removed in favor of a scheme where any qualified applicant shall be issued the license, wouldn't a set of restricted and unrestricted licenses being issued at the discretion of the licensing authority run afoul of this ruling?

I read most of the opinion, but not all of it. It seemed to strike down denials based on "suitability" so long as they are not otherwise a federally prohibited person.
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In mASS, the only permit you can have to carry is a Class-A LTC. Ergo, everyone get a Class-A LTC. Because the SC was very specific about carrying a firearm, concealed, OUTSIDE of your home.

GaryO said:
Can you imagine the douchebaggery of this masturbating monkey?

"You know, we know that in the United States you have the right under the First Amendment to say pretty much anything anywhere because we have freedom of speech in the United States. What the conservatives on the Supreme Court are saying is we want the Second Amendment to be a first class right like the First Amendment," Toobin griped.

www.foxnews.com

SCOTUS guns rights ruling prompts meltdown from CNN's Toobin: Conservatives want guns 'anywhere anytime'

CNN's Jeffrey Toobin railed against the Supreme Court striking down a strict New York State gun law, and argued the ruling could lead to more mass shootings.
www.foxnews.com www.foxnews.com
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Most attorneys are not that bright. Just because you passed law school doesn't make you light-years smarter than the average bear. This guy is a prime example.

He goes on whining about how things will be anarchy because of this - ignoring that 20-something states have PERMITLESS carry and another 20-something or so have SHALL ISSUE carry. Somehow, anarchy will flow if these last 6 holdout liberal states have shall-issue carry. LOL

akma said:
It already is the wild west. The criminals are running the streets without fear of justice. A couple of dead criminals laying in the streets as opposed to the usual carnage of the citizenry would give pause to those with evil intent.
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I'll point it out again - it is NEVER about saving lives. It's about controlling them. The police don't or won't control the criminal element. But controlling the populace so they can do what they want??? Definitely a plus in their book. They do it blindly without thinking. It isn't evil intent. It's ig-nertz. Same reason we STILL have police ossifers on detail work in mASS. 1 out of 50 states requires it. Because. . . . I guess we're just dumber than the rest of the country.
 
Tinkermatic said:
I wonder what it means for restrictions in red towns such as Brookline and Boston?
From what I understand, getting ‘unrestricted’ in Boston means proving you have a necessary reason to carry i.e. lawyer, doctor, connected, etc.
I think Brookline will renew without restrictions? This decision would seemingly pave the way for the restrictions becoming a thing of the past, but I really have no idea what I’m talking about.
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I'll bet the deed to my house that if - IF - this ruling affects ANYTHING in this filthbag infested CommonPuke of LiberChusetts, it will happen when my great-grandchildren are seeking to carry a gun in public without any BS from the scumsucking state we live in.

Just sayin'
 
Bladerunner said:
Some behind the scenes drama. Good article on the lawyers that were told to leave their law firm for bringing this case forward.

www.wsj.com

Opinion | The Law Firm That Got Tired of Winning

After our Supreme Court victory protecting the Second Amendment, we were told to ditch our clients or leave.
www.wsj.com www.wsj.com
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Whiffreading all the most popular Reader Comments,
there were no libberal cucks making the grade -
everyone was upvoting Our Kind of Comments.
 
Bladerunner said:
Anyone or any entity can submit an amicus brief. That they didn't, yet are now flapping their gums about it speaks volumes to the political theater surrounding the embarrassing press release.
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Sure.

And to be clear, their behavior now is not in their job description, either. They're politicians, politicking.
 
lancecolonel said:
This forum has been pointing out the media’s lack of coverage of chicago violence for years. I wonder if it will start getting more media attention now that politicians have issued all of their “wild west” warnings……
hmmmm……
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If they were going to do that, you'd think they'd have started after McDonald v Chicago
 
beaker said:
And typical Commie Tyrants, the DOJ thinks it can ignore the SCOTUS. The DOJ has no respect for the rule of law. Garland and Mayorkas need to be impeached and removed from power but will the RINO's do that when they take the house and senate back?
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Get it out of your head - they are NOT going to take the House and Senate back. It's going to be a Donk romp... in furtherance of both The Great Reset and the humiliation of the American electorate.

Many - even Ann Coulter etc and NESers like @Hoover - have put forth the proposition that the 2020 election was NOT stolen via cheating, but Cuz Trump. There will be no such excuse in 2022. They're going to steal it, and they're going to rub your noses in it.
 
LittleCalm said:
Except the wait times are about 5-6 months and they urge you to submit renewal 3 months prior. Crazy. One thing that seems clear from Bruen is that the court probably would uphold a basic, objective licensing scheme and would not require states to have constitutional carry. So the next battles will be over processing times and fees. Fees also invoke the 14A issue as discussed above.
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VTHunter said:
As noted, there is a lot to sort out as a result of this decision. The decision is not specifically about reciprocity. However, it is about equal protection and one-step interpretation of a constitutional right. There could be far-reaching implications - or not...
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Mesatchornug said:
Based on the commentary, I'm not sure it's clear they wouldn't find against licensing altogether. I agree that fees and delays are the next obvious place to attack.
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Not just a several month wait and fees but hopefully this can also address the fact that some states make you appear in person as part of the process.
That can be a massive burden to travel to another state (unarmed) wether it be one state over or across the country.
 

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