Using a garbled reading of history as a crutch, the U.S. Supreme Court’s supposed textualist conservatives have just managed to codify a cartoon cutout version of the Second Amendment, obliterating New York State’s concealed carry firearm permitting system. We will mince no words: This will cost the lives of civilians and police officers, as almost anyone in New York City will now be free to carry a gun. At a time when the proliferation of weapons is already killing record numbers of Americans, the nearly absolutist right of self-defense the majority canonizes will become a right to societal suicide.
It’s just 27 simple words written in 1789: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the six-member majority, brazenly ignores that first clause and renders the second in the most expansive terms imaginable.
With all the incisiveness of a junior high school student, he states: “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.” By this principle, there’s just about no weapon that can be restricted in hardly any place, so long as a man with his finger on the trigger can credibly assert the need to protect himself. Indeed, with ever more Americans carrying ever more guns, the psychological need to carry ever more powerful weapons only escalates.
