By NRA-ILA
On September 21, the Biden Administration filed an amicus brief in the pending U.S. Supreme Court case of New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, supporting New York’s draconian and unconstitutional restrictions on the right to bear firearms in public for self-defense.
This NRA-supported challenge to New York’s “may-issue” licensing scheme for public handgun carry will be the first Second Amendment challenge to a firearm law to be considered by the high court on the merits since 2010.
New York’s law presumptively denies the right to bear arms for self-defense unless a license applicant can demonstrate a special need for self-protection that distinguishes the person from the general population.
In practice, this means the rich and well-connected can get unrestricted carry licenses but ordinary people cannot, even if they actually face a greater risk of being violently victimized while going about their daily lives in public. The law effectively nullifies for most New Yorkers what the Supreme Court has already characterized as “the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.”
New York’s “may-issue” scheme in fact gives authorities so much discretion that it has fostered a culture of corruption, particularly within the Licensing Division of the New York City Police Department (NYPD). There have been repeated scandals involving the NYPD Licensing Division’s application process, with “facilitators” offering gifts and bribes to licensing personnel to approve or expedite their clients’ applications. In some cases, this has resulted in the issuance of carry licenses to applicants with otherwise disqualifying criminal histories and in criminal convictions for NYPD officers. In other locales, licenses are issued by elected sheriffs, with preference given to political donors and supporters.
The entire point of the New York scheme is not simply or primarily to screen out applicants who fail to meet objective standards of responsible and law-abiding behavior. It is to give authorities complete control over who gets to exercise the right and who does not. This, of course, is wholly incompatible with the idea of a fundamental right, which exists, as the Supreme Court said in the Second Amendment context, “to take certain policy choices off the table.” If the starting point for a carry licensing scheme is presumptive denial, then there is no right at all, only a privilege administered to the favored few.
And this is absolutely fine for the Biden Administration, at least when it comes to the Second Amendment.
After all, as we’ve reported, Biden’s own son Hunter has the manifest privilege of violating with impunity various federal gun control laws the government brief insists are so necessary to protect public safety. This is in addition to his apparent immunity to other laws against things like drug possession and distribution, prostitution, and the list continues.
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The government’s brief, filed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Justice, also gives complete vindication to the NRA’s opposition to now Attorney General Merrick Garland’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016, when he was a federal appellate judge. Anti-gun pundits had mocked that opposition at the time, falsely claiming there was no legal basis for it, even though Garland had voted to rehear a case that had ruled an outright ban on handgun possession violated the Second Amendment. Yet, as we had explained, the only plausible reason to support such a “do-over” was that the court had come to the wrong conclusion. Why repeat something already done correctly?
Now, as AG, Garland is advocating that the U.S. Supreme Court effectively remove the right to “bear arms” from the U.S. Constitution. The administration’s brief additionally argues for what it calls a “reasonable regulation” standard for other types of gun control and for its implementation via “intermediate scrutiny.” Activist and anti-gun courts have used this standard to uphold not just may-issue licensing schemes but sweeping bans on some of America’s most popular types of firearms and magazines.
Fortunately, the United States Senate blocked Garland’s Supreme Court appointment in 2016. Thus, while his noxious view of the Second Amendment will still be put forth before the court, he at least won’t have the opportunity to cast a vote against the right to bear arms himself, as he undoubtedly would have.
While no outcome at the Supreme Court is ever guaranteed, Second Amendment advocates should if anything be in an even stronger position this time around than during the court’s prior visitations of the Second Amendment in 2008 and 2010.
And Merrick Garland –Barack Obama’s handpicked choice to replace the legendary Justice Antonin Scalia, author of the landmark Second Amendment opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller – will have to watch from the sidelines as just another lawyer.
Special needs should be
satisfied by the criminals and officials we have in this country today.
“Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, EVER, until your 2nd Amendment rights are dead.”
We need a terminator of our own.
I am with you, Brutha. All restrictions on keeping and bearing arms is ‘infringement.’ All infringement is unconstitutional and therefore illegal. We need to stop negotiating the parts and particulars and start advocation for the repeal of all gun laws.
Let’s face the facts Justice Atonin Salis was murdered! This was set up so Obama could nominate MERICk! In such a high profile position you don’t do a autopsy and cremate the body in 24 hours ? This never happens unless there something to hide! He was murdered and Obama administration was behind it! MERICk Garland has murder on his hands just as well!
The evidence you provide doesn’t prove murder beyond a reasonable doubt. This attitude is why innocent people end up in jail. 2+2=7 is not the correct answer. IMHO
Aren’t these “God given rights”?
If so how could anyone take them away other than God himself.
If someone other than God were to try, that would be theft, punishable by having your hands cut off, now Muslims are being flown here and influencing our ways, and when in Rome…… do as the Muslims do.
Then you get thrown in the ocean to try to swim.
SOCIALISM HAS NEVER WORKED, IT HAS FAILED 100% IN THE PAST.
What all totalitarian governments do.
I love college football ( cause fuck the NFL ) and one of my favorite chants the crowds of college kids have been doing is , and I quote ” FUCK JOE BIDEN ! ”
Makes me laugh every time , there is hope for the youth of tomorrow .
Don’t be too sure of the motive behind that chant.
Are they actually aware of his administration’s harmful, anti-American, Progressive-Socialist agenda, or are they, like AOC and her crowd, pissed at Obiden for not going far enough to “fundamentally transform” the country?
Are they pissed at him because they haven’t yet received their promised “free” college tuitions? Etc, etc.
Just another nail in the Biden coffin. Where does he get off denying my Constitutional right to defend myself against the garbage he’s letting into America
Don’t you get it? They(the Progressive-Socialists) have stated that the Constitution is an old, outmoded document that needs to be scrapped. They don’t believe in individual rights, only your right to exist so long as you voice no opposition and pay “your fair share”(i.e., all their insane taxes).
In reading a few comments here, such as “Larry”, I would say that it is easy to understand why, as you replied;
“Unfortunately, your attitude seems to be more the rule than the exception these days.”
Not withstanding “how our Democracy works”, Larry’s comment, although crudely stated, is also how our Federal Constitutional Laws work. Although part of the crude I state includes the fact that not all Politian’s are responsible for the “unfortunate attitude”; his statement does include the ” present despots, oligarchs, and/or fascists,” that are abandoning the Constitution, it’s laws and their sworn oath to uphold it. Any politician/individual holding an office sworn to protect this country and citizens against all enemies florigen and domestic, and then exploits it and it’s people for their tax dollars, and most egregiously, takes away it’s citizens’ rights within that constitution’s federal laws; forging new laws that result in deaths… deserves no less than the same. Death. No quarter. However, no entity guilty of said crimes needs to forge new laws in that response. The penalty for Treason is death.
One of the reasons for rope and light poles is politicians.
For someone like Benito Mussolini in WWII or any number of other past and present despots, oligarchs, and/or fascists, I’d have to agree with you. But to kill someone or otherwise cause that person physical harm because said individual, politician or otherwise, doesn’t share your opinions…that’s not the way DEMOCRACY’s supposed to work. Unfortunately, your attitude seems to be more the rule than the exception these days.
We are at war. It’s a war we didn’t want, but here it is. In warfare, you don’t coddle the enemy, you don’t compromise, you don’t “reach across the aisle,” you don’t give-up. You fight until you vanquish your enemy.
So, Larry, you “play nice” with your enemy until you get that unexpected midnight visit. Don’t forget to pack some clean underwear and your toothbrush for your new home at the “reeducation camp.”
“Shall not be infringed” does not imply “until the supreme court feels it should”. I’m playing anyway.
“In some cases, this has resulted in the issuance of carry licenses to applicants with otherwise disqualifying criminal histories and in criminal convictions for NYPD officers. In other locales, licenses are issued by elected sheriffs, with preference given to political donors and supporters.”
Yep… Welcome to the People’s Republic of Amerika 2021. How do you like your new country folks?
I like my country just fine. But I live in Texas!
Ha, that’s a joke! Hope you speak Espanol and Creole, because soon you Texans will be the minority.
What’s that expression….. “ignorance is bliss?”
Senile old broken down dunce fool. I’m love seeing mental decline. Couldn’t happen to a much worse pile of useless heap of dung.
Liberal idiots, quit messing with the Constitution !!