How dare ACB lean towards defending the Constitution Right of citizens to arm themselves!
Justice Barrett’s Vote Could Tilt the Supreme Court on Gun Rights
Justice Amy Coney Barrett is just starting to make her mark at the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, her vote flipped the court’s approach to restrictions on attendance at religious services during the coronavirus pandemic. While Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was alive, the court had allowed such limits, in California and Nevada, by 5-4 votes. After Barrett succeeded her, she joined the court’s four most conservative justices to strike down restrictions in New York.
Those same four justices are now on high alert for a promising case in which to expand Second Amendment rights, having written repeatedly and emphatically about the court’s failure to take gun rights seriously. Barrett seems poised to supply the fifth vote they need.
A Second Amendment case decided last week by the federal appeals court in Philadelphia is a promising candidate for Supreme Court review, not least because it presents an issue on which Barrett has already taken a stand.
It concerns Lisa M. Folajtar, who would like to buy a gun. But she is a felon, having pleaded guilty to tax evasion, which means under federal law she may not possess firearms.
She sued, arguing that the law violated her Second Amendment rights. A divided three-judge panel of appeals court rejected her challenge, saying that committing a serious crime has consequences. It can lead to losing the right to vote, to serve on a jury — or to have a gun.
So, she’s a non-violent criminal. I thought Liberals wanted to excuse them. Heck, Democrats want to give the right to vote back to every convicted felon who’s served their sentence, right?
That dissent was written by Barrett when she was a judge on the federal appeals court in Chicago. The law forbidding people with felony convictions from owning guns, she wrote, should not apply when the crimes in question were nonviolent.
“History does not support the proposition that felons lose their Second Amendment rights solely because of their status as felons,†she wrote. “But it does support the proposition that the state can take the right to bear arms away from a category of people that it deems dangerous.â€
That makes sense, right? Of course, Democrats want to take guns away from Everyone Else (never themselves, right?).
In June, however, the court turned down some 10 appeals in Second Amendment cases. Since it takes only four votes to grant review, there is good reason to think that the court’s conservative wing was unsure it could secure Chief Justice John Roberts’ vote.
How dare you people fight for your rights which Progressive (nice Fascist) government keeps taking away!
Dissenting from that ruling, Justice Samuel Alito noted that the Heller decision “recognized that history supported the constitutionality of some laws limiting the right to possess a firearm,†including ones “prohibiting possession by felons and other dangerous individuals.â€
That last phrase, which did not appear in the earlier decision, may be significant. In shifting the focus to dangerousness, it seemed to open the door to the position taken by Barrett.
There are lots of people who are busted on felonies that are not violent, that do not make the people dangerous. What the Times is worried about is that ACB will cause the Supreme Court to take up lots of gun cases, ruling to extend the Right of private citizens to own guns.
Read: NY Times Seems Upset That ACB’s Vote Could Tilt Supreme Court On Gun Rights »
Former President Barack Obama, in his latest memoir, criticized Americans for liking “cheap gas and big cars†more than they care about “the environment†– even during a catastrophic event like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a battle plan Monday for the state to attack the coronavirus pandemic and while boasting to reporters his push for mask-wearing has helped curb the number of cases in the state, neither he nor his aides on the dais – including state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker – wore face masks.
A Los Angeles County supervisor dined outdoors last Tuesday just hours after voting to ban the practice over COVID-19 concerns, a new report said.
New York’s food purchasing system could be going on a strict diet.
When Chirag Bhakta saw a headline recently that said tech workers were fleeing San Francisco, he had a quick reaction: “Good riddance.”
“Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities.â€
Balancing public health against the right to free exercise of religion poses a difficult challenge amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, when cases from California and Nevada reached the Supreme Court earlier this year, the justices deferred to the judgment of their governors, who are, after all, accountable to the people.
