Article by: Michel and Associates
SUPREME COURT RULES IN FAVOR OF SECOND AMENDMENT – OH GLORIOUS DAY!
June 23, 2022-The Supreme Court has issued an opinion in the long awaited NYSRPA v. Bruen case. Until this opinion, it had been 10 years of waiting for the Supreme Court to take up another Second Amendment case after the seminal Heller case which guaranteed the right of the individual to keep and bear arms.
Now, in this latest case the Court has once again sided with the Constitution and millions of gun owners who have been under the oppressive thumb of politicians passing unconstitutional laws. Basically states like California and New York were restricting your foundational rights and they got caught.
The NYSRPA case deals with two basic issues:
1) the issuance of concealed carry permits under a regulatory “proper cause” regime (CCW)
2) the standard under which a Second Amendment case is reviewed in court
The first issue is easy, the Supreme Court made it very simple. New York and the other states that have a “good cause” requirement for issuing a CCW are unconstitutional restrictions on the rights of gun owners. Justice Alito in a concurring opinion stated “[T]he inherent right of self-defense,” Heller ex[1]plained, is “central to the Second Amendment right.” Id., at 628.” This what our attorneys at Michel & Associates have been arguing for decades! The California Attorney General admitted in a statement that the California process for issuing CCWs was unconstitutional under this ruling, even as Governor Newsom began threatening gun owners with new punishment and new laws because of the ruling. We will challenge those just like we did this one and we will win!
The second issue is one of standard of review. While we did not get the strict scrutiny that we hoped for, we did get a test that is devastating to most government claims that their laws can infringe on the rights of the people. In the past courts have used a two step balancing test for all Second Amendment claims. This typically viewed the Second Amendment claims in a lesser light and gave the government the ability to trample the rights of law abiding citizens. The Court here said “The Second Amendment ‘is the very product of an interest balancing by the people,’ and it ‘surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms’ for self-defense. Heller, 554 U. S., at 635. Pp. 15–17. Justice Tomas went on to say “The Court has little difficulty concluding also that the plain text of the Second Amendment protects Koch’s and Nash’s proposed course of conduct—carrying handguns publicly for self-defense. Nothing in the Second Amendment’s text draws a home/public distinction with respect to the right to keep and bear arms, and the definition of “bear” naturally encompasses public carry.”
Basically the Court concluded that all Second Amendment cases should be viewed under a test of history and tradition and with an eye towards what historically existed as a restriction on the Second Amendment when the 2nd and 14th Amendments were passed. Governments now must bear the burden of proving that whatever restriction they want to place on your rights was a restriction when the Second Amendment came into being. This is a huge burden on the government and not one that will be easily met!
Michel & Associates, California Rifle & Pistol Association, and the Second Amendment Law Center have been fighting these types of unconstitutional laws for decades–and we have been winning! Now we look to the next line of cases that are currently lined up at the Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court and addressing some of the marks against the Second Amendment that states like California have had the opportunity to make over the years. Stay tuned as the Second Amendment Reckoning is just getting started.
