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The U.S. Supreme Court is expected within days to rule on the validity of a New York state law that places strict limits on carrying handguns, New York State Rifle & Pistol Inc. v. Bruen and the decision could rewrite the heated American debate over gun control.

Opponents of the law, which requires those seeking a concealed-carry license to prove that they need it for self-protection,argue that the statute is barred by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. But the fact that the Justices are now considering overturning the New York law which has been in effect for more than a century is a vivid indicator of how the justices view of the Second Amendment has taken a dramatic turn in the 21st century, and how what were once unanimous decisions that the amendments reach is limited have turned into rancorous debates at a sharply divided court.

The Second Amendment was added to the Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights in December 1791. It reads: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

That was not a controversial provision, merely codifying a widely held view on the legitimacy of a citizen militia and repeating a guarantee included in the British Bill of Rights of 1689 and the earlier U.S. Articles of Confederation.

What gun controls were and were not allowed was so uncontroversial that it was 1939 before the first case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on whether the Second Amendment applied to a specific law curbing gun ownership. In fact, the Supreme Court had been in business for 85 years before it got its first case involving the Second Amendment at all. And then it was only a peripheral issue.

1875s United States v. Cruikshank had its origins in disputes over the outcome of the 1872 gubernatorial election in Louisiana disputes that led to such violence that more than 100 Blacks were killed. The federal government charged some of the white vigilantes with violating an 1870 statute making it unlawful to conspire to deprive anyone of their constitutional rights. Part of the charges were that the defendants had taken away the arms with which the Blacks were defending themselves.

The justices unanimously freed the vigilantes, saying that the constitutional curbs on seizing guns do not apply to actions of individuals. The Second Amendment, they said, doesnt give anyone the right to own firearms, it merely prohibits governmental action to take away their guns.

But the opinion by Chief Justice Morrison Waite went much further. The Second Amendment, he wrote means no more than it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government.

In other words, he said, the Bill of Rights creates no barriers to firearms regulation by state or local government.

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The Supreme Court again unanimously reaffirmed that position 11 years later. The case had to do with the validity of a $10 fine.

It was imposed on Herman Presser, a member of a group of Chicago workers of German background organized to counter the armed private guard squads formed by local employers. He headed some 400 of the members as they marched through Chicago streets carrying rifles.

That violated a state statute against any private militia not licensed by the governor. Presser insisted that prosecuting him infringed on his Second Amendments right to bear arms, but the justices were having none of it. Reiterating the Cruikshankstance, in Presser v. Illinois Justice William B. Woods wrote unequivocally: [T]he amendment is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state.

From the beginning of the republic, states had placed some limits on gun owners, such as forbidding carrying them in crowded places. But with the Supreme Court assurance that such statutes were valid, in the last decades of the 19th century, the popularity of such laws in state legislatures really took off.

Twenty-eight states had some curbs on where guns could be carried, and 15 barred minors from owning guns. In 1875, Wyoming actually banned all personally owned firearms from any city, town or village.

None of these state statutes were challenged at the Supreme Court.

It was 53 years before the Supreme Court again ruled on a Second Amendment case. United States v. Millerwas the first time the Justices looked directly at a Second Amendment challenge to a gun control law; without dissent they continued to emphasize that the amendment leaves lots of leeway for government regulation.

Under scrutiny was the very first significant federal curb on gun ownership. The 1934 National Firearms Act, passed in reaction to bloody criminal gang shootouts, imposed no bans; it did demand that various guns (those mostly used by criminals) be registered for a $200 fee. Two men arrested for bringing an unregistered sawed-off shotgun from Oklahoma into Arkansas argued that the law was an invalid incursion on their right to bear arms.

But the decision found that right was a very narrow one. The opinion by Justice James C. McReynolds interpreted the amendment as applying only to a defensive militia, and found that a sawed-off shotgun does not have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.

It was not until 1995 that there was a hint that new personnel on the court might be bringing with them a different reading of the Second Amendment. It came in United States v. Lopez, a challenge to the conviction of Alfonso Lopez Jr. for bringing a concealed handgun and bullets to his high school in San Antonio, Texas a violation of a 1990 federal law banning possession of any firearm at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone.

The high court threw out the conviction and held the law invalid as reaching beyond the powers the powers Congress claimed it had to regulate commerce. The Second Amendment was not at issue at all.

But Lopezis a significant part of gun rights history because it was the very first time the Supreme Court struck down a firearms control law. And the justices 5-4 vote showed that the unanimity that had characterized the previous gun control decisions had been shattered.

In 2008, those hints that the Supreme Court was moving away from its narrow reading of the constitutional limits on gun control became unequivocal reality. With another 5-4 decision, the justices tremendously broadened the Second Amendment prohibitions and threw into doubt more than a century of precedents.

That case, Washington, D.C. v. Heller, invalidated a broad gun control law in the District of Columbia that barred possession of handguns and required that other firearms be registered and kept unassembled, even in the owners home. Robert A. Levy, a lawyer who sensed that the Supreme Court was ready to changes its views of gun control laws, had rounded up a diverse group of six local residents to challenge the law.

At the high court, a five-justice majority agreed with Levys clients. The opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia specifically rejected the interpretation that the Second Amendment was exclusively about owning firearms that could be used by a militia, calling that language only a prefatory clause. In fact, he wrote, the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans whether or not they have an intention of participating in a militia.

In other words, as a general rule, neither the federal nor state or local government can put curbs on individual gun ownership.

The court in Heller almost hits the reset button on the Second Amendment, Duke University law professor Joseph Blocher, co-director of the universitys Center for Firearms Law, said.

Scalia did go to pains to make clear that that rule was not absolute that some gun controls were valid, albeit only narrow ones.

Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on the longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, he wrote.

Heller is the standard by which all gun control measures are now judged. In two cases that it took up before the current one assessing the New York gun carry law, the Supreme Court made that clear. Because the District of Columbia is a federal enclave, some argued that Heller did not apply to the state and local laws. But in 2010, again in a 5-4 decision, the court held that the same standard applies to all jurisdictions, thereby invalidating a Chicago policy that for 50 years had effectively banned the acquisition of handguns. And in 2016, in a case the justices thought was so clear-cut that they didnt need to hear oral arguments, the high court invalidated a Massachusetts ban on stun guns, even thought it had been upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, that states highest court.

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The History of Gun Control and the Second Amendment - HistoryNet

Letter to Editor,

I have one simple question to ask the anti-gun folks protesting in Culver City. How would you defend yourself if an armed criminal broke into your house and threatened your life?

I have posed that question to our local Culver City social network groups, and I never got a coherent answer. Infact, one person whined to me and asked me what I would do. I simply answered that I would shoot the intruder and the person who was anti-gun would be dead.

As a consequence, to my answer, the whining anti-gun person complained to Facebook that I was violating community standards and that I should be suspended from Facebook.

Since fascist book, I mean Facebook, is biased against guns and the 2nd amendment, my Facebook account has been suspended for 30 days for supposedly violating the community standards of a whiner.

Not only are our 2nd amendment rights being attacked but our first amendment rights are being suppressed by big tech companies.

This all happened because I asked a simple question that has not been satisfactorily been answered by the anti-gun fanatics.

Robert Zirgulis

Culver City

Read the original here:
Defends Second Amendment Gun Rights - Culver City Observer

Regarding Militias were the intent (Letters to the Editor, June 16): As a historian of the Second Amendment, I agree with historian Joe La Salas letter about its intent and the fallacy of originalism, but not that its misinterpretation today is the fault of identity politics.

Identity politics were embedded in the Constitution, written by white men, excluding Indian, Black people and women, plus Mexicans once the U.S. had forcibly annexed half of Mexico. Each group would experience oppression and struggle for citizenship and formal equality.

La Sala also fails to mention research about what the white militias codified in the Second Amendment were for: killing Indians to occupy their land and to guard against slave revolts.

The Second Amendment needs to be abolished for the white supremacist entity that it is.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, San Francisco

Regarding Alameda County should end mask mandate (Insight, June 12): A quick look at virus numbers across the area, state and country shows yet another large spike. Why? Because careless individuals like the authors of Sundays opinion piece think their personal freedoms trump everyone elses right to be safe.

As long as an attitude that somehow having to wear a mask in public is so horrific that you need to risk the health of others continues, this virus will continue to spike over and over.

Lets get real, so-called personal freedom is an illusion. You pay taxes, obey traffic laws, wear clothing, use a helmet on a bike or motorcycle, use a seat belt; these are just a few examples of curbs on your freedoms. Why are you not screaming about these attacks? Irony much?

Im really tired of all this whining of personal freedoms. We need to put this virus to sleep, and if that means a bit of inconvenience for all of us to get healthy, suck it up. Its really sad how self-centered so many have become. Its not all about you.

Time to stop being so selfish and consider a greater good.

Owen Rubin, San Leandro

Regarding Muni bond narrowly rejected voters (Bay Area & Business, June 15): Is the Chesa Boudin recall to blame? Connecting Measure A to the Boudin recall does little to address the root cause of the bonds failure: Proposition 13.

In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13, which placed limits on property tax increases but also stipulated that any tax increase or bond measure, local or statewide, could only pass with a two-thirds super-majority vote. Over the past four decades, raising needed funds for critical public services has become increasingly difficult.

Measure A didnt fail because of pro-recall voters, we simply cant expect to pass $400 million for Muni when 66% of San Franciscans are required to vote yes. If our state representatives in Sacramento truly care about lifting our city out of this pandemic, then the answer is simple: Lower the super-majority threshold. Theyve already done this with school construction bonds, now its time to attend to our crippling infrastructure.

Madeline Cook, Oakland

See the article here:
Letters: What the real intent of the Second Amendment's militias was - San Francisco Chronicle

Submitted by Aaron Arkin.

In the 1963 movie of the same name, Billy Liar (played by Tom Courtenay) is an aggrieved young man, described as ambitious but lazy, living at home in a middle-class English family. Unable to free himself from his dependency and lacking the strength of character to move himself into the world of adult choices, he resorts to constant lying (thus the name) and frequent fantasizing. Of the latter, the most striking is when in response to a harangue from his parents, we see him armed with a machine gun angrily mowing down his entire family. For the movie audience, the contrast between Billys fantasy and what is actually and mundanely taking place at the family dinner table is shocking, and maybe for some, even vindicatory.

Of course, Billy wouldnt really murder his family, and in England he wouldnt have ready access to a machine gun. But experiencing grievance is not rare, and in our country awash in assault weaponry, the aggrieved dont always settle for just fantasy.

When establishing responsibility for a criminal act, three elements are sought: means, motive, and opportunity. In the case of mass murder, means is easy access to guns. Here in the US, their ubiquity was turbocharged by the Supreme Courts most recent interpretation of the Second Amendment which reads: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear, Arms, shall not be infringed.

Historian consensus for most of American history however, was that the Second Amendment limited the un-infringed possession of Arms to a citizen militia. They concluded the Founding Fathers were focused on keeping state militias from being disarmed in the absence of a national armed service. The revised interpretation of the Amendment, giving individuals that constitutional right, was provided by the opinion of Justice Antonin Scalia. Writing for the 5 to 4 majority in District of Columbia v. Heller (June 20, 2008), he ignored both the Amendments historical context, and its grammatical construction.

The Second Amendments grammatical construction, it is built on two clauses, the building blocks of sentences. Clauses are groups of related words (phrases) that contain both a subject and a verb. When a clause can stand alone as a complete sentence with a clear meaning, its considered independent. If it only makes sense when you join it with another clause, its dependent (or subordinate). A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State is a dependent clause because it makes sense, that is, it is only a complete thought when combined with its following clause the right to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

Another way we know that the Second Amendments grammatical construction is a complete and logical thought only when the two clauses are combined is because, according to the grammar text, Writing and Thinking, Foerster and Steadman, revised by McMillan, the meaning of the independent and dependent clauses holds if the full statement can be preceded by the terms if, in case that, provided that, unless, since, as, because, inasmuch as, in that, or and now that, without changing the thought of the sentence. For example: Inasmuch as a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed has the same meaning as the Second Amendment.

Summing up, the complete thought and logic of the two Second Amendment clauses is that, if militias are necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms wont be infringed. The converse of that statement is that, if militias are not necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms does not automatically follow. Since we no longer have or utilize self-armed citizen militias to secure the State, the Second Amendments rationale became irrelevant or inapplicable when the United States created its own armed services. One could reasonably argue that, in effect, the Second Amendment repealed itself.

As an avowed constitutional textualist (by the way, a questionable and controversial mode of legal interpretation of historic documents), who supposedly focused on the plain meaning of the text of legal documents to understand and emphasize how the terms in the Constitution would be understood by people at the time they were ratified, as well as the context in which those terms appeared, it is striking and ironic that Judge Scalia chose to ignore both the grammatical construction of the Amendment, and its historical context. In his dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens (joined by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, David Souter, and Steven Breyer) argued that the courts judgment was a strained and unpersuasive reading which overturned longstanding precedent, and that the court had bestowed a dramatic upheaval in the law. One may fairly conclude that in his desire to provide individual citizens the right to have Arms for self-protection, Judge Scalias commitment as a constitutional textualist was conditional.

Many supporters of Scalias interpretation do seem to sense that his reading of the Second Amendments intent rests on shaky legal ground; seeing any restriction on gun rights as a hole in the dike or a slippery slope, if you will, that could cause Scalias legal edifice to fail. Pointedly, we dont see similarly strenuous advocacy in service to the other nine Bill of Rights Amendments which, presumably, sit on firmer legal grounds. Shaky grounds or not, with the Courts ruling, we are now left to deal with its unintended consequences.

When it comes to grievance as a common human experience for motive (the second element of a criminal act) at the heart of mass shootings, I am brought in mind of an ironic saying, Lucky the man who knows who his enemy is. I take this to mean that if ones focus is on an enemy for ones difficulties or failures, it is not necessary to look within. And unfortunately as it turns out for us, for many people with that need there is no lack of enemies: different races, religions, political views, sexual identity and preferences, immigrants, economic classes, event attendees, people in power, people without power, high achievers, old people, young people, people who criticized, bullied, bested, insulted, or made fun of you; who cut you off on the highway, drove too slowly, wore the wrong color clothing, said something you didnt like, looked at you funnily, had something you were lacking. In other words, the other.

Opportunity (the third element of a criminal act) for mass murder is provided by so-called soft targets: night clubs, houses of worship, places of employment, grocery stores, schools, restaurants, malls, public gatherings, festivals, highways, homes, neighborhood streets. There is really no limit. Considering all of the above, we have a perfect storm for increasing the number of mass killings using semi-automatic and what are effectively automatic weapons.

Even in the face of this horrific violence however, there has been little appetite for meaningful political solutions. There is even refusal by many politicians to accept that the proliferation of lethal weaponry contributes to the slaughter. Instead we get the mantra: Guns dont kill people; people kill people, followed by arguments for increasing funding for mental health care (which ironically many politicians on the right have voted to defund in the past), hardening all soft targets (as if that were really possible), and getting tougher on criminals (although we incarcerate more people than any other nation on earth): anything but meaningful restrictions on access to guns and banning the most dangerous weapons.

Supporters of least restrictive gun laws also make the argument that we would be safer with more arming of the citizenry, including teachers, more open carry laws, and fewer restrictions on concealed weapons. As it is estimated there are already more guns in private hands in America then there are people, by that measure we should already be the safest country in the world. In fact, we have the second highest number of gun deaths in the world.

A more rational approach would be the one that has been adopted by other advanced democracies. They ignore any right to bear Arms type of construct, and balancing the interest in of public safety against providing self-protection for responsible citizens, just regulate the sale of weapons and the kinds of weapons permitted.

But back to Billy Liar: at the end of the movie, he finds himself in a position to make an actual grownup choice. Hes met a free-spirited young woman (Julie Christie, in her break-out role) who is ready to meet the challenges of the adult world and who offers him the opportunity to join her and start life on their own. And part of him wants this: to overcome his need for dependency; to have an adult relationship, and to make his own way. Sitting on a train about to leave the station, poised for an entry into an adult future, Billy chooses to leave the train to get some milk to drink (what could be more emblematic of dependency and lack of real agency?), promising Julie there is plenty of time for him to get back before the train leaves.

The audience instantly realizes Billy will not be coming back. True to form, he delays his return, described by one critic as the train leaves the station without him as, . . . shrugging on the platform and settling for the mediocrity he despises and probably deserves. Turns out Billy reserved the worst lies for himself. Seems he is not alone.

Read more:
Letter: Billy Liar: Coming Soon To a Theater Near You The Suburban Times - The Suburban Times

Jerry Nowicki| Capitol News Illinois

In a 4-3 decisionwith a blistering dissent from the Republican minority, the Illinois Supreme Court declined to rule on a question of whether Illinois Firearm Owners Identification Act is unconstitutional.

It was the second time the case of the People v. Vivian Brown came before the court and the second time the court declined to rule on the constitutionality of the state statute requiring Illinoisans to receive a permit to legally own a gun.

The majority opinion released Thursday was written by Chief Justice Anne M. Burke and was procedural in nature. It contended that the White County Circuit Court failed to adhere to the Supreme Courts previous2020 rulingin the case, so it once again vacated the lower courts ruling that the FOID Act was unconstitutional.

Previous story: Illinois Supreme Court rules on gun cases, upholds Deerfield ban on assault weapons

Burke was joined in the majority by Democrats Mary Jane Theis, P. Scott Neville Jr. and Robert Carter.

Justice Michael Burke who is not related to the chief justice wrote the dissent, making up 11 of the 21 pages in the Thursday order.

He argued the majority decision was based on a misunderstanding of the record and a misreading of this courts precedents, and that it could keep the defendant in legal limbo for an untold period of years.

The case involves a White County resident, Vivian Claudine Brown, who was charged in March 2017 with possession of a firearm without a FOID card after police responded to her estranged husbands call that she had fired a gun in her home.

Police found the rifle but no evidence that she fired it. Nonetheless, she was charged with the crime.

Previous story: Judge finds Illinois firearm ownership card law unconstitutional as applied to 1 resident

But a circuit judge in White County threw out the charge, ruling that the fees and forms required to receive a FOID imposed an unconstitutional burden on Browns Second Amendment right to keep a firearm in her own home.

But it was an alternative ruling made by the same court without prompting from Browns legal team that allowed the states high court to decline to rule on the constitutional grounds.

That alternative ruling contended that the Illinois General Assembly, when it passed the FOID Act, never meant for it to apply in the home, because if it did, it would mean anybody with knowledge of a firearm and exclusive control over the area where it was kept could be construed as possessing the gun.

As a general rule, courts decline to rule on constitutional matters when a case can be decided on other grounds.

Because the circuit court ruled on an aspect of the FOID Act pertaining to state law, the Supreme Courts 2020 decision vacated the order pertaining to constitutionality and sent the matter back to White County to permit the normal appellate process to run its course.

The ruling was essentially a win for Brown, but her legal team contended it wouldnt stand up to an appeal. Thus, Browns attorneys filed a motion to reconsider, arguing that the inevitable loss on appeal would delay clarity in the case.

The circuit court agreed and reinstated the charges. Browns attorneys then filed a new motion to dismiss on constitutional grounds,which the judge upheld, finding that any fee associated with exercising the core fundamental Constitutional right of armed self-defense within the confines of ones home violates the Second Amendment.

Thus, the state appealed the rulingback to the Supreme Court, leading to the Thursday ruling in which the majority decided the lower court had no authority to reconsider the case after the Supreme Courts 2020 ruling.

When a cause is remanded by the reviewing court with instructions to the circuit court to enter a specific order, the reviewing courts judgment is, with respect to the merits, the end of the case, and there is nothing which the circuit court [is] authorized to do but enter the decree, the court wrote, quoting other case law.

If the lower court were allowed to make changes to the Supreme Courts ruling, the majority wrote, it would set a precedent upending our hierarchical judicial system.

The dissent from Michael Burke, however, argued that the majority asserted finality of its ruling while also suggesting that the proper place for review is now an appellate court, which is itself a lower court.

In reality, the judgment of the circuit court was not a judgment of this court that was final and conclusive on all the parties because this court declined to reach the merits of the statutory analysis and only vacated the circuit courts judgment on procedural grounds, Michael Burke wrote in the dissent. Accordingly, the trial court was free to reconsider the merits of that ruling, and nothing about it doing so upends our hierarchical judicial system.

Michael Burke argued that the majoritys supposition that Brown received complete relief when the circuit court vacated her charges was faulty, because the legal reasoning backing that decision is unlikely to hold up upon appeal.

Thus, he predicted, the case will ultimately end up back at the Supreme Court on the constitutional basis, only after a significant delay to Browns detriment as the case moves through the appellate court.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government that is distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

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Why the Illinois Supreme Court declined to rule on constitutionality of FOID Act again - The State Journal-Register