Will the Supreme Court Act to Lessen Gun Violence this Month or will they Parrot Gun Lobby Talking Points Again?

Here we are again, in the heat of June awaiting further Supreme Court rulings on the Second Amendment in cases brought by those who believe or assert that they are defending their Second Amendment rights to “keep and bear arms” with no governmental or societal limitations. 

Before the Court: whether to allow a domestic abuser to wield a weapon after already using firearms in threatening and dangerous ways and whether to give a green light to the use of bump stocks with assault weapons of the type that slaughtered 58 people and wounded another 400 in a ten minute barrage of at least 1,057 rounds (with some 5,280 fortunately unused) in Las Vegas October 1, 2017.

Common sense would seem to offer a simple foundational judgment, that confirmed abusers should not have legal access to firearms and that weapons of war should not be made even more deadly in the hands of civilians, whether they are psychologically stable or not.

Fair jurisprudence in the abuser case, that of United States v Brahimi, is particularly murky.  The flawed SCOTUS rulings of the recent past (Heller and Bruen) imposed the “originalist” or “textualist” views of conservative justices through textual acrobatics and outright dismissal of the Second Amendment’s clear language referencing the Amendment’s purpose related to a “well organized militia, necessary to the security of a free state”.  

The issues at play in Brahimi simply did not exist in a meaningful way in the legal structures underpinned by the Constitution of the new United States or in its constituent states.  Women, such as the person abused by Brahimi, simply had little or no recognized legal rights or recourse to spousal abuse in 1787-1791 when the Constitution was written, ratified and amended.  It is well worth the time to listen to the oral arguments presented by the Brahimi side to get a sense of the vulnerability inherent in the justices’ “originalist” jurisprudence framework ( https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2023/22-915).

It is unnerving to think that somehow this Supreme Court will continue its contorted reasoning, best exemplified in the June 2022 rulings by Justices Alito in the Dobbs case on women’s reproductive rights and Thomas in Bruen, where he made “self-defense” the “central component” of the Amendment.  Both rulings are deeply flawed in terms of judicial logic, reading of the Constitution itself, and reliance on a version of history that has been authoritatively challenged by leading historians of Constitutional Law and 18th century U.S. history.

So we can only hope that the Roberts court will find a way to make a common sense ruling in Brahimi and deny him and other domestic abusers access to deadly firearms while under court-imposed restraining orders.  The lives of thousands of abused spouses will be at even greater risk should the Court fail to do so and thus add further mistaken judgment in Rahimi to its deadly and dangerous decisions in Heller and Bruen.

And then there is Garland, Att’y General v Cargill, the bump stock case that saw the strangest, most confounding of petitioner arguments in trying to make the technical case for a device that simply facilitates mass murder (https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2023/22-976). 

Seems to this observer that SCOTUS should also consider the final report of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (https://www.lvmpd.com/services/advanced-components/misc-pages/search?q=FIT%20October%201%2C%202017) as a late submission as a friend of the court brief to understand the incredible human cost associated with bump stocks. 

That a well-trained colonial era militiaman could barely manage three rounds a minute with his trusty “Brown Bess” musket with its 100 yard range and that the Las Vegas shooter achieved a rate of fire of nine rounds a second should be justification alone for a common sense and juridically sound ruling against permitting bump stocks in civilian weaponry.

Let’s hope and pray for rulings in these two case that make the country and its residents safer.  Equally important, let’s hope that sensible rulings in these two cases also clearly lay bare the flaws in the “originalist” rulings in Heller and Bruen, rulings that read as though they were written on the basis of gun lobby talking points.

Both Justice Scalia’s assertions in Heller that the Amendment’s militia clause is of no relevance or import and that it is “frivolous” to argue that modern day weapons were not foreseen by the drafters and approvers of the Second Amendment must be continually challenged, as should Justice Thomas’ baseless assertion in Bruen that self-defense is the “central component” of the Amendment.

We’re just days away from significant SCOTUS rulings that will make the country more dangerous, or possibly safer.  In any case it will still be critical to sustain public pressure on the Court on these two cases and on the contorted “textualist” logic and jurisprudence of previous cases.

Once these new rulings are out, let’s work ceaselessly together to ensure that the public spotlight continues to shine forcefully on the Court’s shortcomings and mistakes in this crucial area of public safety and that citizens truly enjoy their right to life, liberty and happiness in a less violent United States.