By a 6-3 majority, the United States Supreme Court ruled today that the constitutional right to keep and bear arms extends beyond one’s home. Citing the Heller and McDonald precedents, the Court ruled that the State of New York’s requirement that law-abiding citizens show just cause to carry a firearm outside one’s home was a violation of the fundamental right of self-defense. Thus, the “show cause” laws in a handful of states, notably New York, California and Hawaii, are now unconstitutional.
Given the cited precedents, today’s decision seemed a foregone conclusion. It is difficult to fathom how a constitutional majority on the Court could have ruled otherwise. Self-defense is something our Founders would have included in the “self-evident” laws of nature and of nature’s God. The human body is a top to bottom system of defense against infection, and human beings and all higher-order animals instinctively defend themselves and others against threats. It turns logic on its head to argue that public safety entails depriving citizens their right to keep themselves safe.
The predicable wailing of the disarm-Americans-first crowd about homicide rates, including mass shootings, is entirely irrelevant. This is a question of constitutional law, not what a majority of nine judges in Washington D.C. thinks policy-wise. The focus of leaders is to work for public safety without depriving the People their right to do what the state cannot do. As the Court stated, nothing in today’s ruling prohibits jurisdictions from banning felons or the insane from owning a firearm. Mandatory safety certification, though that isn’t a constitutional stipulation, appears to be a standard the current Court will accept. Thus, the ruling is not a firearms free-for-all. New York governor Kathy Hochul’s promise to defy the Court and call a special session of the legislature is nothing but a psychological hissy fit designed to satisfy her Leftist allies. Nothing the New York legislature will pass will be enforceable if it is discordant with the Court’s ruling.
America doesn’t have a gun problem; it has a culture problem. As we’ve stated repeatedly, guns have always been a part of American history, but mass shootings are a relatively recent phenomenon. Anybody who seriously wants to address the problem of gun violence is morally obligated to work to fix what is wrong with our culture. Disarming law-abiding citizens is a symptom of the problem; it is not a solution.
Today’s ruling is a victory for the American People.
