Recent Court Cases and What Gun Control is Really All About
BY Herschel Smith
1 year, 9 months ago
Slate is mostly a worthless rag, but this one actually brings to light more than the author realizes.
The Bruen decision was a multi-faceted decision partly because of the way the votes separated. Sure, it got the votes it needed in the court. We know that Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch are reliable allies.
Barrett is another story. Because she hasn’t written much on this, who knows how she will decide when the time comes to make the hard decisions.
Roberts is apparently owned by someone who has pictures. Kavanaugh is the wild card.
He voted with the majority, but wrote his own decision – there would be no reason to do that unless he’s telegraphing the future to the other justices.
There are some difficult decisions coming up for them. Bump stocks will come up – and there is absolutely no question about the statutory language there. A device like that doesn’t meet the definition.
There are other decisions: pistol braces, the 5th’s recent decision on prohibitions for men of questionable moral character, and the most recent of course is the one concerning users of controlled substances.
Jonathan Turley gets it right in his analysis of the use of controlled substances and firearms ownership.
I particularly liked this observation from the court about reading discretion into the amendment to bar those deemed untrustworthy by the government:
[I]t would be odd indeed for the Framers to have incorporated such a trojan horse into the Second Amendment. The purpose of enshrining a right into the Constitution is to limit the discretion of a legislature. But if the United States’ theory is correct and all a legislature must do to prohibit a group of persons from possessing arms is to declare that group “untrustworthy,” then the Second Amendment would provide virtually no limit on Congress’s discretion. The Framers weren’t perfect, but they also weren’t fools.
In the end, none of this is about whether men of questionable moral character should be allowed to own firearms. The man in the instance of the fifth circuit case committed crimes against others. Prosecute him for those. Ownership of a firearm in this case is irrelevant. If they had removed his firearms and he was still committed to a life of crime, he could have converted to an arsonist.
In the end, none of this is about whether men who use controlled substances should be allowed to purchase firearms (as the judge pointed out). It’s about the degree of government control over the lives of men, and to what end that goes concerning abuses and exploitation by the government.
Gun control is about control. Nothing more, nothing less.
On February 8, 2023 at 11:07 am, Joe Blow said:
Shall
Not
Be
Infringed
We’re done talking here.
On February 8, 2023 at 7:47 pm, Bradley A Graham said:
….’To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the law abiding gun owner that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless”……
Lysander Spooner
On February 9, 2023 at 10:24 am, Paul B said:
I once pointed out a factual error on a slate page to the author. His response was whatever.
Never went back to that site. Even if they get close to the truth they lie.