Conservative jurisprudence on guns has fallen far and fallen fast into the gaping maw of Second Amendment absolutism.
In the majority opinion he authored in 2008′s then-seismic District of Columbia v. Heller ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” He added that the freedom there described is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
“The majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question,” Scalia acknowledged, “held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues.”
“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms,” namely “that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ ”
It’s 2022. After the Supreme Court struck down a New York law requiring an individual to demonstrate a specific need in order to legally carry a concealed weapon here, the Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul swiftly passed new statutes designating Times Square and other places sensitive locations and, while making concealed carry rights broadly accessible, gave issuers the power to deny permits to those not of “good moral character.”
We’ve had some questions about whether a few of those new provisions will withstand legal scrutiny — the “sensitive places” may have been drawn too broadly, and the applicants must be vetted as objectively as possible — but many are on solid ground.
Nevertheless, an upstate federal judge’s ruling has just predictably frozen lots of the provisions, claiming they run afoul of the sweeping new Supreme Court edict. Make no mistake: The legal and constitutional goalposts have moved with radical speed, making a mockery of so-called originalism.
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