As a SCOTUS ruling on NYRPA v Bruen nears, We must Spotlight the 2nd Amendment’s 27 words and What They Actually Mean in Today’s 21st century America

Yes, only three months away from a historic Supreme Court ruling in the case of NYRPA v Bruen on whether to relax state regulations on concealed carry in New York and, if so, throughout the nation. 

Meanwhile, red state legislatures continue their inexorable march to nationwide open carry.

Three months to increase the public spotlight on the critical problems of the wording of the Second Amendment and its demonstrable corrosive impact on Americans and American society.

Three months to demonstrate irrefutably that the Amendment as written is a deadly and costly anachronism that actually is weakening the country and undermining societal cohesiveness.

In this blog, I have sought to do just that, to encourage a reasoned national, nonpartisan discussion of the Amendment’s poorly drafted 27 words and what those words actually mean in today’s 21st century America.  The goal: to focus leader' and fellows citizens' attention one of the main causes of our gun violence crisis, the Amendment itself.

If you concur, then let’s work together to flank the great efforts of so many with regard to common sense gun safety and security measures with a serious nonpartisan discussion of the 27 words of the Second Amendment.  As part of that joint effort, I hope you will retweet this to as many people you can reach and follow up with your own outreach to leaders, influencers and decision-makers, friends and colleagues.

For too many years we have needed to reframe the issue before the nation and the Supreme Court in clearer, 21st century terms, and now we need to do it before the Court rules on NYRPA v Bruen in June, when it could decide to relax concealed carry regulations in New York state. The reframing arguments are there, and they are compelling.

This blog has highlighted some of the demonstrable flaws and weaknesses of the Court’s landmark decision in Heller v District of Columbia (2008).  The Court’s ruling, while focused on firearms for self-defense in the home, unfortunately prepares the ground for possible future SCOTUS decisions expanding on the notion of armed self-defense in the streets and public places of the United States. NYRPA v Bruen offers the Court just such an opportunity.

More than half of the nearly ninety friends of the court briefs filed support the NYRPA petition, and many of those offer simple rote recitations of how English law and firearms became part of the American DNA as the country was founded in the 18th century, fully 230 years ago.  One brief even reached back to the late ninth century with their assertion of relevant English traditions.  Others argue that access to firearms in public is needed to protect women and minorities. Some briefs speak garbled legalese, or try to.

Nowhere in the briefs supporting the NYRPA’s petition is there any recognition that the level of gun violence in the United States far exceeds that of Europe, Australia, Japan and South Korea. 

Nowhere in the briefs is there any recognition of the human, economic, political and social costs of gun violence in our country, or the totally unnecessary human tragedies of thousands of innocent deaths and woundings.

Nowhere in the briefs is there any recognition that the authors’ positions enabled the murder of 60 innocent people and the wounding of 600 at a Las Vegas concert in ten minutes in 2017, with the shooter’s rate of fire nine rounds a second, or the murder of 50 in a night of horror at the Pulse night club in Orlando the year before. 

Nowhere in the briefs is there any acknowledgement that the authors’ positions facilitated the murders of so many innocents in Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Sandy Hook, Washington Navy Yard, Charleston, San Bernardino, Sutherland Springs, Parkland, Pittsburgh, Thousand Oaks, Virginia Beach, El Paso, Dayton. Atlanta, Boulder, Indianapolis, San Jose, Oxford, and so many smaller multiple casualty events down through the decades. 

Nowhere in the briefs is there a mention of 20,000 murders and 24,000 suicides by firearms each year in this great country.

Nowhere do they accept responsibility.

Today, in 21st century United States, there is no rational or humane reason for the arguments the briefs advance, and the authors have no shame in their simple heartlessness.

Thankfully, the voice of reason comes through in the briefs of those sincerely concerned with the human and societal cost of our pervasive gun violence and gun culture.  Fortunately, some law enforcement organizations have filed briefs in support; now their leaders need to mount vocal communications campaigns to reinforce their message of concern for their officers, the citizenry and public safety in general. 

Similarly, the academic briefs need concerted communications efforts so that confirmable history can counter the distorted and misguided narrative that the gun lobby has managed to impose through its decades of unrelenting PR and manipulation of ill-informed and receptive audiences.

We all have to do more publicly and do it now. In this day and age, in 2022, the words of the 2nd Amendment demand scrutiny, relevance, and sensibility.  The words must mean something that makes sense today. 

And that’s why the Scalia arguments in Heller are so tenuous, and so self-serving for the writers of those many briefs supporting the NYRPA.

No, a “well organized militia” as understood in 1791 is not “necessary to the security of a free State” in 2022. 

No, the militia’s function in 1791 was not to protect against a tyrannical government. Indeed, Washington himself led several states’ militias to put down the Whisky Rebellion in western Pennsylvania in 1794, all consistent with Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and the May 8, 1792 militia law enacted less than six months after the December 15, 1791 entering into force of the Bill of Rights.

No, the gun lobby narrative fabricated since the hard line gun rights take-over of the NRA in the late 1970s is just that, fabricated, and it is time to push back publicly, consistently and in an open nonpartisan debate focused on the Amendment’s 27 words.

Think about this and join the effort to put these real and serious concerns in the center of the public spotlight, now, before the Supreme Court buys into those rote arguments put forward by the partisan authors of so many of those briefs supporting the NYRPA petition.

It’s time to place public pressure on the Court as it debates NYRPA v Bruen in these final months, and it’s time to do it without further delay. Now.

It is time to make things right for the country and the thousands of past and future innocent victims of America’s daily gun violence; it’s time to bring the Second Amendment into the 21st century.

With great respect and appreciation...