More Misread Tea Leaves

How a pending gun rights case and the near-certain leftist histrionics will further damage the Democrats' mid-term election prospects.

The Democrats and the mainstream press continue their endless gun-obsession, calling it a "public health epidemic." Joe Biden exploring ways to end-around Congress and unilaterally impose restrictions on citizens' rights via executive order, and his mouthpiece, Jen Psaki, blaming the objects rather than the persons for the surge in crime.

This despite no evidence of a correlation between gun ownership and murder rates, and many of the biggest problem areas being those with already-strict gun laws. This despite a precipitous drop in murder rates in the past four decades, even as millions more guns are purchased by citizens every year...

...and even as gun rights continue to be restored in state after state.

Consider this list of US states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Twenty-one states, within which a quarter of the US population resides. As of this past July, these states are all "Constitutional Carry" states, wherein a person not debarred from owning guns due to some disqualification (e.g. a felony conviction) can legally carry a gun without government permission or permit. Texas is the most recent to join that list, despite the usual hand-wringing from the usual suspects.

Another twenty states and the District of Columbia, comprising half the nation's population are known as "Shall Issue" states, wherein the government bears the burden of showing cause for denying an applicant a carry permit.

This wasn't always the case. In fact, this state-level pro-gun-rights movement only began in the 1970s (we can assume it's in response to the federal-level infringements on gun rights starting in 1968). It started in Georgia, but it was Florida's 1987 enactment of shall-issue legislation that really got the ball rolling.

Who are the laggards? California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. Nine states continue to tell their citizens, a quarter of the US population, that owning and carrying a gun is subject to bureaucrats' whims. In many cases, people are required to provide justification in applying for a carry permit, with the bar set impossibly high for all but a small fraction of applicants.

Residents of some of those states have been trying for years to get their rights restored, especially since the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court cases of 2008 and 2010 affirmed the individual right to bear arms was protected by the Second Amendment. That the Court has failed to clarify and enforce those rulings has been a source of great frustration for gun rights advocates.

The Supremes finally agreed to hear one of these challenges. In New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, two residents of Rensselaer County in upstate NY are challenging New York's may-issue doctrine. The Court heard the case this past October, and is due to rule in June.

With a presumptively 6-3 "conservative" tilt in the Court, gun rights advocates should be optimistic that this arbitrary infringement will be knocked down. This, even with Roberts proving to be quite the squish, and displaying repeated fecklessness in telling the government "no, you can't" in response to its endless excesses.

One thing to watch is how the vote goes down. If things go as hoped, and Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh,and Barrett vote pro-2A, Roberts may be shoehorned into siding with them, if only to control the narrative. As Chief Justice, Roberts gets to decide who writes an opinion... if he has voted with the majority. If the Chief Justice votes with the minority, then the senior associate justice in the majority gets to decide.

Assuming the liberals vote against, then Clarence Thomas would be the decider, and Thomas has been openly complaining about the Court's laggardness as to gun rights. I'd not be surprised if Thomas, given the opportunity, at least tried to write a constitutional-carry opinion. Unlikely, but not outside the realm of possibility.

Far more likely, we'll finally see may-issue go the way of the dodo, and the quarter of the populace in the nine (blue, in case you didn't notice) states currently being denied their 2A rights finally catching up to the rest of the nation.

It is not possible that the Democrats are unaware of the right-to-carry movement that has encompassed 3/4 of the nation. That they persist in their desire to restrict our gun rights speaks of a combination of arrogance, indifference to the voters, and echo-chamber. It also points out their blindness to history. In 1994, their assault weapons ban was a big factor in their massive Congressional electoral losses and the rise of Newt Gingrich's GOP. That ban, which expired a decade later (it was the only way they could get it enacted), made no measurable difference in gun crime.

What we do know is that homicide rates and gun crime have decreased markedly since the right-to-carry movement began. This is a correlation, not necessarily a causation, but it serves to obviate the "guns are the problem" argument we hear so often. If more guns = more crime, then we'd have seen the opposite trend.

Gun rights advocates know this. Gun rights advocates also know that the Democrats are not their friends, that they won't be satisfied even if they get all that they are seeking (ban on "assault weapons" and high capacity magazines, buy-backs, universal background checks (which would necessarily include universal registration)) today, that they'd pursue more and more restrictions and bans until they had either a de-facto or an actual repeal of 2A, and that they'll lie about it all to get their way. And, gun rights advocates are pretty serious in their voting habits.

The Democrats are already facing a highly likely loss of their slim Congressional majorities this fall, thanks to widespread dissatisfaction with their kowtowing to the far-Left. They will only exacerbate this likelihood when (when, not if - disarming Americans is dogma to them) they go bonkers over a SCOTUS ruling that restores gun rights to New Yorkers, and by extension to the residents of the other may-issue states. They will win no new votes by threatening to pack the Court to overturn this and other rulings, but they will further motivate those who oppose their authoritarian agenda to turn out in droves to vote against them. Their fanatical desire to stand contrary to the nation's broad pro-gun movement will only hurt them further, and if they want to mitigate their losses, they should just stop trying to take away our rights.