It's been a good couple of weeks for the cause of defending the Second Amendment in the courts. On the other side of the ledger, that means it's been a rough go for our dear friends in the civilian disarmament industrial complex.
First it was Hemani, with the Supreme Court ruling unanimously that occasional use of marijuana doesn't justify stripping an individual of his right to keep and bear arms. The Court didn't buy the government's argument that dropping a gummy before bed or occasionally smoking a joint is prima facie evidence that someone is "categorically violent and dangerous."
Strangely (or not) the gun control industry was uncharacteristically subdued after that defeat, despite the fact that they'd gotten in on side of the .gov in arguing for loss of gun rights. That's probably because while their dozens of member -- and more importantly, the individuals and NGOs that fund them -- are largely on the side of weed legalization. So, not wanting to antagonize most of the people who pay them, they chose the better part of valor and stayed mostly stum.
And then SCOTUS dropped the Wolford decision yesterday, shining a deadly ray of sunlight on Hawaii's vampire rule. As Justice Alito wrote, Hawaii's law "hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives."
That, after all, is the business that Brady, Everytown and Giffords is in. It's their passion. Their reason for being. So when they took yet another legal body blow, they found their voices and full-throatedly condemned the new dystopian landscape the high Court has allegedly ushered in.
“I will not mince words: This deeply dangerous majority opinion privileges guns over everything and all people in society. It is eminently reasonable that visitors receive property owners’ permission to bring firearms onto their private property open to the public. Yet the court has manipulated a legal test of their own design to launch this attack on public safety and our freedom from gun violence. What's more, they are thwarting the will of the people and the legislature."
Today’s decision has stripped away a fundamental baseline for safety; instead of gun owners asking for permission, the burden is now shifted onto all kinds of businesses—local coffee shops, family-owned bookstores, and neighborhood gyms—to take active steps to opt out.
And not to be outdone, some of the anti-gunners' most supportive and dutiful stenographers in the media jumped in with both feet.
[T]he supermajority killed the law because it was offended that Hawaiʻi would dare try to mitigate the violence that SCOTUS has unleashed through its radical, incoherent gun rights jurisprudence. Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion for the court bristles with annoyance toward the state government’s attempts to protect people on private property from getting shot to death. Constitutional law has given way to six justices’ ad hoc nullification of any law that favors human life over the paranoid obsessions of gun enthusiasts.
And that all happened before news broke later in the day that Abigail Spanberger's "assault weapons" and "high capacity" magazine ban can't be enforced in Virginia...at least for now.
All of the bleating is as predictable as it is enjoyable. And hyperbolic, too. As always. Prognostications of blood-soaked pavement and bodies stacked like cordwood is the regular MO of the gun control industry and its backers in politics and the media, despite the fact that the dire warnings never pan out.
Outlaw "may issue" permitting? Smash the panic button.
Another state enacts permitless carry? Cue the parking lot shootout predictions
Zero dollar tax stamps? Warn of silent snipers behind every bush.
Yes, it's annoying and tedious. Not to mention consistently wrong.
Unless you're unfortunate enough to live in one of the under-policed non-prosecution zones that big city mayors have established (with help from Bond villains like George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and the Joyce Foundation) in the country's population centers, Americans have literally never been safer in their lifetimes. And all this while gun ownership and concealed carry have never been easier or more widespread.
So let the anti-gunners continue to kick and scream after each loss they absorb. In the meantime, Americans will continue to buy guns, suppressors, pistol braces and SBRs, all while enjoying their enumerated civil rights in a country that's hasn't been safer in over a century.
– Dan Zimmerman