Time for a Strong Unified Gun Safety Message to SCOTUS As NYRPA v Bruen Ruling Looms

We are all very frustrated and perhaps even fearful.  I know I am.  The country’s gun violence crisis is about to enter an even more dangerous phase.

That makes it doubly important for everyone to step up and speak out forcefully now on the glaring flaws of the Second Amendment as the Supreme Court ponders doing away with restrictions and permits on concealed carry.  It’s a “all hands” moment on gun violence.

With the Bruen clock ticking, it’s time for the leaders of major gun safety groups to speak out – as a united group -- to change the course of impending events.  Consistent national polling data over many years confirms that Americans would like to see sensible gun safety measures.  In essence, they want a ‘Second Amendment for 21st Century America”. 

Some eight months ago I decided to join the effort to curb gun violence and firearm-related deaths in the United States by promoting a “21st century 2nd”.  The goal:  to encourage a national nonpartisan discussion of the gun lobby’s shaky and false historical narrative on the Amendment. 

The starting point was to challenge the gun lobby’s questionable assertion of a continuing role for “militia” as it relates to the “security of a free State” today and the need for a heavily armed population in the United States. Most critically, the incoherent 27 word amendment written by 230 years ago has been clearly overtaken by the course of two centuries of history and political/economic/social development. 

The gun lobby’s success at enshrining the final four words of the Second Amendment as the be all and end all of gun rights in the U.S. is at the heart of today’s tragic gun violence problem.  As a consequence, the Amendment contributes to the incredible proliferation of firearms in the country and the many thousands of unnecessary and avoidable deaths and injuries resulting from gun violence each year.

Venturing into the Twitter world only confirmed this judgment.  That a reasoned appeal for a national nonpartisan discussion of the Second Amendment would generate vicious, rote and threatening responses from so many people confirms the extent to which the gun lobby has achieved blind allegiance to its bogus ideology.  For them (and for the late Justice Scalia), those final four words (SNBI) dominate and are unassailable, and the stumbling preceding 23 words matter little if at all.  It is a tragedy for the country, that those 23 words have been easily cast aside, including by some members of the Supreme Court. 

With the flawed reasoning of the Scalia 5-4 majority opinion in Heller v District of Columbia the starting point for Bruen, things seem dismal indeed.  To make matters truly worse, red state governors and legislatures are behaving like the proverbial lemmings going en masse over a cliff in their senseless pursuit of permitless open and concealed carry in their states, where there already are high levels of gun violence, homicides and tragedy.  Those governors and legislators – and their gun lobby supporters -- now bear direct responsibility for the random carnage sure to increase in their states.

Today, in mid-May 2022, we are just weeks away from a SCOTUS decision in NYRPA v Bruen, and the prospect of permitless concealed carry permits throughout the country.  If so, we can only expect the firearm floodgates to open fully in many more states, with legal challenges severely constrained. 

It is incredibly difficult to watch the country sleepwalk into such an untenable public safety situation, one that truly threatens our valued law enforcement and public security institutions and officers.  That police organizations have limited their engagement to pro forma friends of the court briefs in support of common sense (while Western state sheriffs apparently embrace permitless concealed carry) adds to the sense of deep foreboding

What has particularly troubled me over these past months is the obvious lack of a concerted gun safety response to the powerful but greatly flawed gun lobby juggernaut.  That there has been no apparent public collaboration and sense of shared purpose among the leading gun safety organizations has been truly disconcerting.  Sadly, they also seem to be sleepwalking along with the tide of red state lemmings toward that gun violence precipice rather than working imaginatively together to thwart the slide into the abyss.

There are several simple things that they can and should do in these waning days of SCOTUS deliberations on NYRPA v Bruen.  

First, they should stand together in a very public way, making a strong and united statement on the steps of the Supreme Court building highlighting all of their concerns on gun violence and the gun lobby’s perverse reading of the Second Amendment.

Secondly, they should immediately launch mutually reinforcing public communications efforts to highlight the obvious weaknesses in the false gun lobby narrative and campaign. 

Thirdly they should step up efforts to confront the Supreme Court and leading politicians and community leaders with the fact that the gun lobby’s bizarre goal of making guns ubiquitous on our city streets, neighborhoods and homes regardless of the costs in lives, pain and to the economy is untenable for the country, and is based on questionable jurisprudence.

The national brouhaha over the leak of the draft Alito opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has been ominously instructive.  It has made the SCOTUS deliberative process nakedly clear, where stare decisis is secondary to political objectives and the imposition of a minority’s alleged “conservative” values on the greater majority of the country’s citizens and residents.  It has put the public spotlight on the Alito’s draft’s specious arguments.  And it points the way to a likely SCOTUS ruling in Bruen adverse to the State of New York’s laws and regulations requiring permits for concealed carry.

Incredibly, the impact on the conservative SCOTUS justices of 44,000 deaths from firearms, many tens of thousands of injuries, and the related economic and social costs is apparently nil.  They seem to care more about counting the number of centuries old English firearm citations on a pin head than looking with clear eyes at the 27 words of the Second Amendment, what they meant 230 years ago and what they mean today.

That our much admired leading gun safety organizations are missing the crucial opportunity to press the Supreme Court is hard to fathom and accept.  Understandably, they are working hard to win battles at the local, state and federal legislative levels, victories that are necessary but not sufficient when the strategic, big picture situation is about to go down the drain. 

Just imagine trying to achieve local and state measures on such sensible and popularly supported safety measures as background checks, magazine limits red flag laws, and mandatory training when the Supreme Court has ruled against permits for concealed and open carry of firearms.  Playing catch-up in such circumstances will achieve little after SCOTUS puts the final nail in the gun safety coffin.

So, please join me in urging the leadership of the Brady | United Against Gun Violence, Everytown, Moms Demand Action, Giffords Courage and so many other organizations to step forward.  Let’s encourage them to gather together on the steps of the Supreme Court this week or this month to convey a convincing united message to the Court and the nation, to go on every news and talk show and at politicians’ town meetings to spotlight the pending serious and societally costly SCOTUS misstep on Bruen. 

The simple sound bite “A Second Amendment for 21st Century America” can help kick start this critically needed national nonpartisan discussion on what is best for the country in 2022.  The focus: firearm ownership, traditional firearm purposes for home defense, hunting and sport shooting, and, perhaps most important, public safety and security related to law enforcement. Put simply, we should be discussing modernizing the Amendment while protecting legitimate reasons for firearm ownership not facilitating greater violence on American society and innocent victims.

This discussion needs no political parties.  It needs no political funding by PACS and other influence peddlers.  It only needs basic good will, a true understanding of history and the unfolding of world events, firm commitment and focus, and sincere concern for fellow Americans and other residents of this great country of ours.

Send your emails, tweets and phone messages to these organizations and others now so that their leaders will see and understand that it is time for them to work publicly together for a cause to which we all are so deeply committed.

It’s time to do the right thing for America.

@SCOTUSits2022not1791