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‘Thank you, President Trump!’ Reaction pours in over ‘momentous’ SCOTUS ruling on gun rights

June 23, 2022 | | Print Article

 

(Video Credit: Fox News)

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley applauded the 6-3 ruling by the Supreme Court in favor of New York gun owners, calling it ‘momentous’ for the Second Amendment.

Turley said during an interview on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday that the high court ruled that the Second Amendment should be treated as a guaranteed individual right.

“This is seismic for a lot of reasons especially because it’s not just New York. These are the other states where it would have an effect: California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. And when you have a case like this that has such a seismic impact, how long does it take for those other states or even New York to change its rules? Is it as of today? Does it change?” co-host Dana Perino asked Turley.

“All those are presumptively unconstitutional and they should be changed but the question is they really can’t be enforced to the degree they contradict this decision,” Turley began.

“This is a momentous decision for gun rights advocates and for the Second Amendment. It has all of the elements that you often associate with a Thomas opinion. He brings up sort of originalist history, swatting back arguments from later, after the ratification as largely irrelevant to understanding the intent behind the Second Amendment,” he continued.

“But most importantly, the court rejects a two-part test for looking at limitations on gun rights. And stresses you need to presume that people have a right to exercise individual rights like gun possession. And that means that you can’t put the sort of thumb on the scale as New York did here and say, ‘Show us that you have proper cause, including moral standing to have a gun,'” Turley noted.

He went on to stress that all rights in the Bill of Rights apply to Americans. They are not selectively applied.

“And what the court really hammers at is that this would not be tolerated with other rights in the Bill of Rights. And there is a tendency among some judges and many legal analysts to treat the Second Amendment as something less than an individual right. And what Justice Thomas is saying here is that this is an individual right with the other rights in the Bill of Rights. And we don’t like shifting the burden to people to say, ‘prove you need to use this right,'” he commented.

The existing standard before the landmark ruling required an applicant to show “proper cause” for seeking a license and allowed New York officials to exercise discretion in determining whether a person has shown sufficient reason for the need to carry a firearm. Declaring that one wished to protect themselves or their property was ostensibly not enough to obtain a license.

“In this case, petitioners and respondents agree that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense. We too agree, and now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the Court’s opinion, referencing two previous gun cases.

“Because the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution,” he wrote. “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.”

“In keeping with Heller, we hold that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” Thomas wrote.

“Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s ‘unqualified command,'” the opinion asserted.

Following the ruling and Turley’s sane assessment of it, the left predictably came unglued.

MSNBC host of “All In” Chris Hayes tweeted, “I’m sorry but the idea that the constitution *requires* universal concealed carry is plainly insane.”

Liberal hothead and political pundit Keith Olbermann totally went off the deep end with his trademark unhinged anger, “Also, f*ck Alito, Thomas, Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and the paralegal Coney Barrett.”

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Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
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