The issue here is what the NRA represents to the Democrats. So it’s important to keep our eyes on the ball. Not on LaPierre. Not what we know to have been the NRA’s failures.
The thing to keep in mind during the legal war launched today between New York State and the National Rifle Association is that the Second Amendment does not exist in New York City and state. It has been blocked at every level by state and local authorities. In New York, there is no right to — in the plain language of the Constitution — keep and bear arms. The right has been denied as a matter of policy for decades.
That will be, we predict, the elephant in the courtrooms that hear the dueling lawsuits that New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the NRA itself filed today. New York’s case, which seeks the dissolution of the NRA over the alleged misuse of funds, was filed in a state court. The NRA, in a suit filed in federal court in the northern district of New York, seeks to block the state investigation from violating its rights.
This battle couldn’t be more important. That’s not only because of the salience of the rights at stake. They are supposedly vouchsafed by the First Amendment and Second Amendment. It’s also important because New York’s lawsuit is motivated by politics. The timing of New York’s case couldn’t have landed at a more mischievous moment, coming as it does on the eve of a presidential election. No doubt that’s intentional.
Editorial of The New York Sun
