Excellent article. It also highlights what I think is the deeper constitutional issue. The problem isn’t that the Second Amendment is unclear. The problem is that courts too often begin by asking whether a particular arm is protected instead of asking where the Constitution grants government the authority to prohibit it. Once that starting point changes, the burden shifts from government to the citizen. The Bill of Rights was written to restrain government—not require Americans to continually prove they deserve their rights.
Buried 18 pages into a Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case known as Calce v. City of New York is an uncomfortable truth the gun prohibition lobby and its congressional and legislative allies want to avoid as two cases challenging bans on modern semiautomatic rifles are on the court’s docket for the term beginning in October.
By no small coincidence, both of those cases were also brought by SAF, and the outcome will almost certainly bring its sister organization—the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA)—out of the shadows, where it has dwelt for too long, and into the spotlight. More about this in a moment.
SAF’s Calce Petition Puts the Burden Back Where It Belongs
In SAF’s petition for Supreme Court review of New York City’s “recalcitrant” behavior regarding its stubborn refusal to obey the spirit, if not the letter, of the high court’s previous ruling on stun guns in a 2016 case known as Caetano v. Massachusetts, in which the Court rejected lower court rulings that said stun guns are not protected by the Second Amendment.
By Dave Workman
