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Nonetheless, the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have apparently concluded that the Second Amendment does not apply to the people in its broadest sense as written, but only to law-abiding people. Alito came perhaps the closest to explaining the difference in his concurring opinion in Bruen. While the dissent seemingly thinks that the ubiquity of guns and our countrys high level of gun violence provide reasons for sustaining the New York law, the dissent appears not to understand that it is these very facts that cause law-abiding citizens to feel the need to carry a gun for self-defense, he explained, referring to Breyers dissent.

Alito then went on to describe how law-abiding citizens interact with and can be distinguished from criminals in more detail. No one apparently knows how many of the 400 million privately held guns are in the hands of criminals, but there can be little doubt that many muggers and rapists are armed and are undeterred by the Sullivan Law, he wrote, referring to the New York statute at the heart of the case. Each year, the [NYPD] confiscates thousands of guns, and it is fair to assume that the number of guns seized is a fraction of the total number held unlawfully. He went on to state, citing statistics and anecdotes alike, that ordinary citizens frequently use firearms to protect themselves from criminal attack.

Some of this is a bit obvious. A mugger carrying a gun is not law-abiding; a person defending themselves from a mugger is law-abiding. But Alitos reference to the NYPDs confiscation of guns held unlawfully is where things break down a bit. The whole point of the legal challenge in Bruen was that otherwise law-abiding New Yorkers who lacked concealed-carry permits could not go to certain places in New York City with their guns without facing arrest and seizure. According to the friend-of-the-court briefs filed in Bruen, more than a few people whose guns were seized by the NYPD in recent years intended to use them for self-defense, or at the very least did not intend to use them to commit a crime. Criminality, in other words, is more than just whatever a state decides to criminalize.

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Why Does the Second Amendment Only Apply to Law-Abiding Gun Owners? - The New Republic