Why the Nation’s Gun Laws Are in Chaos
The Supreme Court last summer sought to clarify its expansive reading of the Second Amendment. Instead, it set off chaos. The decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v.
Bruen decreed that gun-control laws of today must have a clear forerunner in weapons regulations around the time of the nation’s infancy, regardless of the modern public-safety rationale behind them. The result: Hundreds of gun cases litigated in recent months have become a free-for-all, with lower courts conflicted or confounded about how and where to draw limits on gun rights. “There’s all this picking and choosing of historical evidence.
‘This is too early. This is too late. Too small, too big,’" Judge Gerard Lynch of the Second U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals said during a recent argument about a new law in New York that prohibits guns in sensitive places like parks, museums and bars. “The whole thing puzzles me." In that case, the right of licensed handgun owners to carry weapons into bars and theaters could hinge on 19th-century statutes that barred drunks from carrying firearms, and outlawed guns and butcher knives in social parties attended by ladies. A case decided last fall held that the federal ban on guns with obliterated serial numbers was unconstitutional because unmarked guns were perfectly legal in the 18th century.
The Bruen case launched the upheaval. In that decision, the Supreme Court said New York couldn’t require concealed-carry applicants to prove a dire need for self-protection. The 6-3 opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas and endorsed by five fellow conservatives, said the restrictive licensing rules violated the Second Amendment right of ordinary, law-abiding citizens to carry handguns for self-defense.
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