Whatever It Takes...

The naive among us might have thought, for just a moment, that the Supreme Court's Bruen decision, which overturned New York State's "deny for any old reason or for no reason at all" policy on firearm concealed carry licenses (CCW), might have prompted the few states that still deny citizens their Second Amendment rights (as previously affirmed by the Court in 2008 and 2010) to throw in the towel and get in line with the majority of the nation (42 states, comprising 75% of the populace, have “shall-issue” or “Constitutional Carry” CCW laws on their books).

Oh, no, young fools, no such luck.

New York State's legislature ran frantically back into session to enact a passel of rules intended to make getting a CCW as much a pain in the ass as they figured they could get away with, they wrote a de-facto prohibition on carrying a handgun anywhere. Not only is CCW prohibited in any "sensitive" public space, including anything the government runs, any public transportation, any health or educational facility, any protest gathering, any street fair, bars, libraries, public parks, zoos, theaters, arenas, stadiums, clubs (full list here), any public facing business is also considered off-limits unless the owners specifically post a "firearms permitted" sign in the window.

In short, even if you get your CCW, it won't be of any use to you other than at home or walking down the street to nowhere.

The legal challenges are already in progress, and I figure many will succeed. Unfortunately, challenges take time, and since “a right delayed is a right denied,” we should look with great scorn upon the “public servants” who are wiping their derrieres with both the Court’s decision and the Constitution itself.

Not to be outdone, California is trying to misuse Bruen's "gun restrictions must be anchored in historical traditions" language, which was intended to limit the government’s power to restrict, by trotting out old, blatantly racist gun laws enacted during the Reconstruction, arguing that some of its present-day laws are "rooted in the historical tradition—dating back to the founding—of disarming groups of people perceived to be dangerous or unvirtuous.”

Those groups included blacks, Catholics, and native Americans.

The jackasses defending California's restrictive laws even offered a chart of over a hundred such laws. That half of them predate the Second Amendment didn't stop them from folding them into the "historical tradition" argument.

Would these people posit a defense of slavery via a "historical tradition" argument? After all, slavery has been the norm for over 95% of humanity's six thousand years of civilization, and it was codified in both secular law and religious texts, and indeed, there were some who attempted to justify slavery via scripture (good thing we don’t have a state religion…). Would anyone who tried to put that argument forward today be treated as anything other than a monster? Would any of those Jim Crow laws debarring blacks from owning guns stand a chance of surviving the slightest bit of court or Court scrutiny?

The Court has spoken on the matter of gun rights. It is prepared to allow the abridgment of those rights for those individuals who've done Bad Things (e.g. felony convictions), but the message is quite clear that arbitrary denial absent specific and just cause is a no-no. As is piling on onerous and capricious regulation intended to produce a de-facto ban. As are efforts to bypass the Court's intent by making carrying guns illegal just about everywhere.

That it is universally the progressives and leftists who are fighting, tooth and claw, to keep their prohibitions in place (and to add more, for that matter) should, unfortunately, not surprise us. Recent years have made it amply clear that they have absolutely no regard for the rights of anyone who isn't of their tribe and their political philosophy, whether it be as to guns, religion, property, Fourth Amendment privacy, or even speech.

That they spurn the Court's rather clear message is unsurprising. It's just another sign of the continuing breakdown of legal and societal structure, one born of a hatred of liberty itself. That these same people avow a support and respect for democracy and the will of the people would be the funniest thing you hear today, were it not so tragic.

If they have such a scorched earth attitude toward one of your rights, don’t expect them to show the slightest hesitation in savaging your other rights when they get in the way of the totalitarian utopia they seem to desire.