The latest U.S. mass shooting at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school creates a new point of political pressure on a U.S. Supreme Court that has signaled it will soon limit state and local governments’ ability to enact gun control measures.
The dispute, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, is the oldest outstanding case currently pending before the justices, having been argued back in November. Tuesday’s mass shooting may affect the timing of the ruling should a justice want to reference it in their opinion, but the justices aren’t likely to delay the release due to optics, legal scholars say.
“It’s hard to find a time to issue an opinion expanding gun rights that won’t be marred by a mass shooting,” said Second Amendment scholar and UCLA law professor Adam Winkler. “We have a lot of mass shooting in the United States. They seem to happen every few weeks, depending on how you count them they tend to happen even more frequently.”
