Originally published at: A gun in every pocket: Supreme Court strikes down restrictions on concealed carry | Boing Boing
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So every time some republican babbles “States’ rights!” we may shout in their @#$! ears “What did your @#$ supreme court do to New York on marginally saner gun control?!?!” We’ve known forever that they’re raging hypocrites, so why does the hypocrisy still manage to twist the innards? -sigh-
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Now that the death-cult party has politicised the judiciary, the SCOTUS is going hog-wild on taking us back to the 19th century in many aspects of everyday life.
For me it’s because they obviously don’t care when they’re called out for it; to the contrary, many of them seem to revel in it.
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Does that mean I can conceal carry into the Supreme Court itself?
(Asking for a friend.)
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Except this is about an enumerated right. States rights issues don’t apply.
Anyway, this ruling hardly changes anything for most of the US. Only about half a dozen states still have / had very restrictive issuance policies. Now they will all need to go shall-issue. Felons are still banned from possession of guns or even parts of guns. Training and background check requirements still are in place. This ruling does not force states to allow carrying without a permit.
The number of people in NYC who will go through the trouble to get permits will be very small. We have previously seen very restrictive locations like Washington DC and Chicago go from “almost no issue” to shall issue and … very little changed. 99.9% of the problems are people carrying without permits. Criminals a) can’t get permits due to their criminal records and b) don’t want to spend $1,000 on permit fees, training and all that.
If anyone seriously wants to reduce gun violence, prosecute felon in possession. That’s clear federal law, it’s a 10 year sentence, it’s easy to prosecute (all you need to prove is possession), and it removes dangerous people from circulation for 8.5 years. We saw some recent example of a prosecutor who opted not to seriously pursue felon in possession charges and it resulted in a family member being stabbed and two cops being dead. That’s the issue to concentrate on and this ruling doesn’t change anything about that.
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Now we’ll see if gun deaths go up in NY.
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I need to read the ruling, but my understanding is, it leaves permit systems in place. It only removes the good cause requirements.
This ruling will allow a small number of people in a very small number of locations to get permits who otherwise couldn’t. They will still need to meet all the training and background check requirements.
This will have no real-world impact beyond the very few people who can now get permits who couldn’t before.
NY made a big big strategic blunder in this one. They should have issued permits to prevent this case from going up the court system. This is what DC did. They chose not to fight an appellate court ruling precisely to avoid this type of outcome. NY could have done the same, letting a tiny number of people get permits and avoiding such a nation-wide ruling.
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Note that breaking headlines (such as this one) tend to simplify rulings whose text tailors to circumstances.
I’ll say.
NY can still implement conceal carry laws that have restrictions and requirements on getting a permit, and where one can legally carry. They could even ban conceal carry entirely. They struck down the requirement to “to prove “proper cause” to carry concealed weapons and that they faced “a special or unique” danger.” This ambiguous language lead to mostly ex-cops and certain people in the security field, as well as other connected elites obtaining permits. Average person - nope. It was, by all measures, a classist system.
SCOTUS is in DC, not NY. So no.
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i’ll wager that you don’t won’t briefly entertain (further) the considerable amount of legal controversy/ uncertainty this biased assertion is associated with. If you really would seek an introduction to how unsettled that conjecture is, one could do worse than to start with this wikipedia discussion page on this issue. ((i know i’ll regret even replying to this, but hope springs eternal))
Addendum of a more qualified opinion on how this ruling tromps on states rights: In radical decision, Supreme Court all but nullifies states’ right to control guns
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Canadian here. Personally I’m saddened by the tragedies this will cause, but: If I were someone who hated Americans/America, I would burst into giddy applause over this. I would be doing everything I could to encourage as many Americans to carry as many guns around as I could, because why bother with terrorism when Americans are gung-ho about killing themselves and each other? I’m just baffled how many Americans don’t see the bigger picture
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Yes, this is a good “experiment”. The thing is, this experiment has already been run. Chicago and DC both had (and still have) high rates of gun homicides. They both were almost no-issue and then suddenly flipped to shall-issue. The analysis to do is to see a) how did this change impact gun homicide rates and b) how many shootings were there by people with CCWs? Because homicide rates go up and down due to various factors, but if it’s not people with CCWs doing the shooting, then it’s probably not a change related to the change in CCW issuance.
The reality is, the vast majority of people pulling the trigger are people with criminal records who can’t get CCWs anywhere.
“Enumerated Rights” is a right wing talking point that is less about guns, and more about trying to eviscerate the fourteenth amendment.
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Oh I will more than entertain it. This is a totally unworked out area of law AFAIK and people have a bunch of different opinions, but the prevailing opinion in the legal system is to not give much importance to states rights arguments. The 10th amendment has very little application in practice. If some Republicans want to re-assert this idea, they’ll need to change quite a lot of people’s thinking about it.
Unless it allows states to deny voting rights, civil rights, or a woman’s right to choose. Those are all perfectly fine to leave up to the states to decide.
This whole thing reads more like “criminals won’t follow laws anyway so why bother 
” taking points that I’m hearing so often these days on the right (even from law enforcement personnel) to justify being against gun laws or reforms. That’s simply not how the law is supposed to work.
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Or, you know, just ban guns.
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This will probably affect California, too:
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Jesus, the Supreme Court are going to get us all killed. I fully expect they’re going to also rule that the EPA can’t limit CO2 and finish the job soon.
Honestly, that would be better than where they’re taking us. They didn’t have assault rifles in the 19th century, nor modern systems of surveillance, nor catastrophic climate change… so gun laws, abortion laws and (lack of) environmental laws all end up having radically different (in the sense of being far, far worse) outcomes.
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I don’t know how the other poster feels, but I think all of those things should be Federally protected and the states not allowed to violate them.
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We all generally agree on that here, I’d say. The GOP does not. They will protect weapons of war, no matter how many children are slaughtered with them, but they will not protect basic human rights of people who are not white men. And here we are, completely fucked.
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