U.S. appeals court: Constitution gives right to carry gun in public

The Second Amendment specifically says "... the Right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

What else could "to bear" mean, than to carry? And while concealed may be tactically advantageous, I cannot imagine our forefathers and their 18th Century countrymen gave a damn about open vs concealed carry.
The antis like to pretend that the second part of 2A doesn't exist or matter and focus on the "militia" portion of 2A. They also like to conveniently ignore that right to keep and bear arms is the ONLY right in the COTUS that "shall not be infringed".
 
SCOTUS didn't give a grace period. They kicked it back to the SJC with a short per curiam opinion basically bitch slapping them for brazenly ignoring Heller and misconstruing it as not applying to stun guns. They left it up to the SJC to make a new decision in light of their ruling that stun guns were protected by 2A. The SJC sat on it for over two years and then gave a 60-day "grace period" on top of that. But the grace period was a legal falsehood. You could buy a stun gun out of state and carry it on you in MA during that period and even if they arrested you, they couldn't convict you.

The way this would likely work is, a test case from some state would make its way to SCOTUS. SCOTUS would rule on that law under 2A. That ruling would apply directly to that state's law immediately, at least in the sense that criminal prosecution would be barred. What would happen in other states could go a few different ways.

If the decision was full-on judicial activism, like in Miranda v. Arizona, it would have instantaneous nationwide applicability, but that's highly unlikely.

If another state had very similar laws, other states could just stop enforcing them. That's what happened with abortion after Roe v. Wade, and that's why MA still has had an abortion ban on the books after all this time.

They could also refuse to back down, or even go out of their way to try to pass new full retard laws they think would comply with the letter of SCOTUS's ruling but destroy the spirit. That's what happened with Brown v. Board of Education in the South, they called it "massive resistance," and it took decades to sort it out. People in each state had to file lawsuits in the federal district courts, and slowly, gruelingly push things forward against hostile state legislatures that were constantly putting up more sophisticated barriers.

The last option would be states trying to narrow the scope of the laws in good faith to comply with the ruling before anyone files any lawsuits to strike them down.
This is absolutely infuriating, but sadly true. All laws, no matter how oppressive, are considered to be Constitutional until proven otherwise after years in court. And even after proven to be Un-Constitutional, it still takes DECADES for everything to straighten out? Wow.
 
This is absolutely infuriating, but sadly true. All laws, no matter how oppressive, are considered to be Constitutional until proven otherwise after years in court. And even after proven to be Un-Constitutional, it still takes DECADES for everything to straighten out? Wow.
I think there are some reasons to be hopeful, if SCOTUS rules as they should.

First off I'd like to think the federal judiciary learned a lot from Brown v. Board about how to deal with "massive resistance."

Second, gun rights are conceptually a much easier issue for the judicial branch to deal with, because it's about preventing states from doing things rather than forcing them to do things. Desegregation of schools required trials and evidentiary hearings to determine if discrimination is indeed still happening, then the courts would issue consent decrees, appoint special masters, etc.

Gun rights are much simpler - the government passes an unconstitutional law, gun rights advocates sue, the court issues a preliminary injunction before the law takes effect, the court strikes down the law after considering cross MSJs. But that only works if they do in fact rule against the laws. And that will only happen if and when SCOTUS issues a very clear decision with clear instructions to the lower courts with a test to apply, which would be something like a two part test, first a historical test to determine if the 2A related effect is off the table completely, which should be applied liberally, and if not use strict scrutiny.
 
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