It was a very good day for all Americans when the Supreme Court of the United States struck down New York’s unconstitutional concealed-carry gun law. Yes, it’s good news for those who wish to carry a firearm in public for self-protection, but the Bruen decision also strikes a blow against bigotry and corruption.
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen the court decided that the New York law ran afoul of the 2nd Amendment by requiring applicants for concealed weapon permits to prove a “special need” for self-defense. Justice Thomas wrote in this decision for the majority, “The Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” [States] can still regulate carry permits, but they can’t deny such permits to law-abiding citizens.”
At first blush that seems like an important, but simple, victory. But it is more than that. This decision made clear that the issue was the subjective nature of New York’s permitting process for carrying a weapon outside one’s home. Allowing authorities to use vague and malleable standards such as whether or not an applicant could show “proper cause” for the permit or be of “good moral character” was too subjective and thus violates the 2nd Amendment.
Think about it—if there is no objective standard in issuing a gun permit (or any other permit for that matter), then any reason will suffice for denying (or granting) that permit. “Good moral character” is one of those vague phrases concocted by the so-called elite to make sure those from the untouchable classes stayed that way. People of color, homosexuals, the poor, and the otherwise disenfranchised were all at one point or another maliciously deemed not of “good moral character” or some other dismissive judgement providing an umbrella excusing social and often legal discrimination. Like the denying of a gun permit.
In a separate case last year in front of SCOTUS a coalition of defense attorneys argued just that about New York’s gun control regime. Reason Magazine reported, “The brief is from a coalition of public defense lawyer organizations, including the Black Attorneys of Legal Aid, the Bronx Defenders, and Brooklyn Defender Services. They are urging the Supreme Court to overrule New York’s gun licensing scheme for both violating the Second Amendment and disparately harming black and Hispanic people.”
What exactly is a proper cause? The WSJ editorial board notes, “That has been interpreted to mean ‘a special need’ for self-defense, beyond that of ‘the general community or of persons engaged in the same profession’… In other words, shopkeepers who must carry cash through high-crime neighborhoods are out of luck. But as Justice Thomas points out, the Constitution protects a right not only to ‘keep’ but also to ‘bear’ arms… ‘To confine the right to ‘bear’ arms to the home would nullify half of the Second Amendment’s operative protections.’”
Moreover, like any situation where something of value is completely controlled by the government bureaucracy with no accountability and doled out arbitrarily, corruption soon follows. In 2018 a former NYPD cop testified at a trial that the city’s gun license division was completely corrupt. The New York Post reported at the time:
“A former city cop spilled his guts Tuesday, telling Manhattan jurors about years worth of bribes he and his fellow officers received for doling out gun permits — everything from cash, prostitutes and expensive watches to baseball memorabilia and exotic vacations… In exchange, the officers doled out pistol permits like candy — even to people who should not have had them…”
Once again, Democrats established and maintained a system that served only the wealthy and well-connected while isolating and denying every other citizen their constitutional rights.
That is what the SCOTUS Bruen decision really strikes at— a sort of criminality that naturally develops when the system itself is operating like an extension of organized crime. Inevitably this corruption reduces our constitutional rights to a plaything available only to the highest bidders and the most powerful.
There has been the usual outrage and temper tantrums by the left and various Democratic leaders about how horrible the Bruen decision is. And they’re right—it’s horrible for tyrants everywhere who had fallen in love with absolute power. For the Democrats their abuse of power has been directed at their own constituencies for generations, crushing freedom, destroying communities and ruining lives.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul represents the sort of mindless hypocrisy we normally see about gun control from the failed Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot. During her press conference about the SCOTUS decision, Hochul went viral for this remark:
“I’m sorry this dark day has come, that we’re supposed to go back to what was in place since 1788 when the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified. And I would like to point out to the Supreme Court justices that the only weapons at the time were muskets. I’m prepared to go back to muskets.”
For the Democrats, it’s a dark day when more of us are able to defend themselves in the hellscapes they’ve created. Hochus was widely slammed for her comments as we all have to ask: Why are the Democrats so obsessed with keeping the law-abiding unarmed? Meanwhile, Democratic politicians simultaneously end bail requirements for criminals and continue to defund the police destroying the morale and effectiveness of law enforcement.