Supreme Court Avoids New York Second Amendment Infringements

“The US Supreme Court refused to question New York’s 2022 gun restrictions, including the state’s limits on concealed-carry licenses and its ban on weapons in buses, parks and crowded venues,” Bloomberg News reports. “The justices without comment turned away an appeal by six New York residents who said the restrictions infringe the Constitution’s Second Amendment and fly in the face of recent Supreme Court rulings bolstering gun rights.”

They do, of course, obviously and blatantly.

“The disputed law requires applicants for concealed-carry licenses to show they are of ‘good moral character’ and aren’t a danger to themselves or others,” the report adds. “Applicants must provide character references and a list of people who live in the same home, undergo an in-person interview and complete 18 hours of in-person training.”

Just like the Founders intended when they wrote “shall not be infringed,” right? Just like the Supreme Court intended in its Bruen decision, and its “text, history, and tradition” standard…?

That’s another thing. Any rational reading would conclude SCOTUS meant consistent with the time the Bill of Rights was ratified. Hoping to legitimize subsequent discriminatory restrictions, gun prohibitionists are still arguing for 19th Century/Reconstruction era infringements. So why did the High Court reject the Petition for the Writ of Certiorari in the Antonyuk case?

It was an interlocutory appeal for a preliminary injunction, legal apologists tell us. Denial of cert doesn’t rule on the merits, and there are other cases in the works raising the same issue. SCOTUS won’t look at a case until there’s a final judgment and conflicts between districts. That and they’ll eventually get around to it. We think. While the Bruen majority is still there… There’s a reason the Constitution calls them “inferior Courts,” but that’s stopping no one.

In the meantime, because procedure is prioritized over justice, Americans will continue to be at risk of having their lives destroyed if they claim rights we know they have, the justices know they have, and significantly, those trying to eviscerate them know they have. It’s the same for gun owners at risk for owning semiautomatic firearms and standard capacity magazines banned by states. SCOTUS keeps kicking that can down the road.

“A right delayed is a right denied,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” “We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”  

Along with that, the violence monopolists are emboldened to impose more restrictions, confident that they won’t be slapped down by the High Court. Any legal pushback will be tied up in the lower courts leaving infringements in place for years, with Democrats hoping it will be long enough to change the political balance of power and appoint judges who agree.

A predictable example is what’s going on in New York right now, with Gov. Kathy Hochul signing three bills to outlaw “pistol converters,” coerce gun stores into putting up signs warning of the “dangers” of their products, and imposing merchant codes on (legal) gun purchases. And more disarmament bills are coming. There will never be enough.

Punting cases by prioritizing procedure over its Constitutional obligation to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” once more demonstrates that all the Supreme Court must do to allow blatant infringements of our fundamental rights to persist and prevail is… nothing.

And it reaffirms an observable truism that people in power don’t give it up unless there’s a credible “or else” behind demands to stop oppressing.

---