“The Law Is A Ass” 🫏

 The Supreme Court has ruled, in a fit of utter and wholly unsubstantiated, ahistorical and non-legal, nonsense (this is a hill I will die on), that restrictions on gun ownership, due to the 2nd Amendment, must follow a test involving:

(3) The test that the Court set forth in Heller and applies today requires courts to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding. Of course, the regulatory challenges posed by firearms today are not always the same as those that preoccupied the Founders in 1791 or the Reconstruction generation in 1868. But the Constitutioncan, and must, apply to circumstances beyond those the Founders specifically anticipated, even though its meaning is fixed according to the understandings of those who ratified it. See, e.g., United States v. Jones, 565 U. S. 400, 404–405. Indeed, the Court recognized in Heller at least one way in which the Second Amendment’s historically fixed meaning applies to new circumstances: Its reference to “arms” does not apply “only [to] those arms in existence in the 18th century.” 554 U. S.,at 582.

To determine whether a firearm regulation is consistent with the Second Amendment, Heller and McDonald point toward at least two relevant metrics: first, whether modern and historical regulations impose a comparable burden on the right of armed self-defense, and second, whether that regulatory burden is comparably justified. Because “individual self-defense is ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment right,” these two metrics are “ ‘central’ ” considerations when engaging in an analogical inquiry. McDonald, 561 U. S., at 767 (quoting Heller, 554 U. S., at 599).

Tl;dr?  Heller created a two-prong test:  is the regulation on guns consisten with the text of the 2nd Amendment (which doesn't mention self-defense, but wait for it) and "historical understanding."  Which, again, the "historical understanding" of the 2nd Amendment was that, until the 14th Amendment, it didn't apply to states; and second, that it didn't provide any "right" to "self-defense."

But we're in Alito/Thomas land now, so: la dee dah.

"Individual self defense," as the Court says there, is "'the central component' of the Second Amendment" (how they derive that from the text is absolutely beyond me, unless an individual is entitled to form a militia to provide for his individual self-defense.  I use the pronoun intentionally.  You'll see.

That led to oral arguments today in U.S. v. Rahimi.  Mr. Rahimi, in one sentence, is:

[a] Texas drug dealer who the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled had his firearms confiscated unconstitutionally after he attacked his ex-girlfriend and then threatened to shoot her if she told anyone

The 5th Circuit ruled, under Heller and  NYSRPA v. Bruen (the case quoted above), that Mr. Rahimi  "should get to keep deadly weapons." Because, of course:  People don't matter.  Only things and ideas matter.

But the case of Mr. Rahimi raises the question of whether or not he can be "responsible" in his gun ownership/possession.  And really, what is "responsibility"?

The conservatives Tuesday seemed more interested in finagling how to narrow a potential decision reversing the 5th Circuit than they stood in staunch opposition to the government’s arguments.

“Responsibility is a very broad concept,” Chief Justice John Roberts fretted, picking at the government’s characterization of Rahimi. “I mean, not taking your recycling to the curb on Thursdays if it’s a serious problem, it’s irresponsible, by setting a bad example, by yelling at a basketball game in a particular way.”

Justice Samuel Alito, too, seemed most perturbed not with the danger to the mostly women in these situations, but by the idea that the mostly men accused of domestic violence could have their firearms confiscated too hastily.

The ramifications of the case for the millions domestically abused each year was largely absent from the arguments at large, except in the U.S. solicitor general’s opening and closing remarks.

“As this Court has said,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar began, “all too often the difference between a battered woman and a dead woman is the presence of a gun.”

Told ya we'd get back to the question of who counts more, men or women.  But the relevant analysis under NYSRPA is: could that gun have been present and unregulated in colonial times? That, says this court, is the only relevant question. And someone has to think of a man's right to keep and bear arms, says Justice Alito.  That's practically in the text of the Amendment, donchaknow? (And if you can't decisively prove anything about such a history, make something up!  Long as it sounds good to the majority presently on the bench, who da fuck cares, amirite?)

Of course the "important question" according to this court's precedent (be careful what you wish for!), is this case where a man wants a gun, not for self-defense ("Responsible!"), but to shoot his girlfriend because she pissed him off. ("Responsible"?  "Irresponsible"? Opinions differ.) And the relevant analogies to this set of facts, according to the Chief Justice of the United States, one of four offices actually established by the Constitution, are to putting your recycling bin on the curb or yelling during a basketball game.  Because those are similar situations threatening to shoot someone in a very private setting.  Somehow.  I guess.

I'm sure it has to do with colonial law in late 18th century America. And the fact that...well, let Justices Brown and Kagan speak to it:

“I’m a little troubled by having a history and traditions test that also requires some sort of culling of the history so that only certain people’s history counts,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said to Rahimi’s lawyer, Matthew Wright.

She pointed to the reality of the limited founding era laws the Court has ruled litigants must pull from: They were written by and extended their protection only to, as Jackson summarized, “white, Protestant men.” Recognition of the legal rights of enslaved and indigenous people, for a start, is virtually nonexistent in the body of the law that undergirds the Court’s rigid originalism. 

Kagan joined with Jackson in cutting through the procedural fog. 

“I’ll tell you the honest truth, Mr. Wright — I feel like you’re running away from your argument because the implications of your argument are just so untenable,” Kagan said.

I'm sure the Chief Justice's analogy to recycling or shouting during a sporting event is relevant here, too.  I'd love to hear him explain how.

Anyway, the clear upshot of Heller is that the Court couldn't make sense out of the single, compound sentence that is the 2nd Amendment, so they threw it out and wrote a brand-new one they could make sense of.  And they did this because they're the Supreme Court, Bitches!, and they said the Constitution says they can do so and nobody else can argue with 'em!  And now they face the Frankenstein monster they created (in the truest sense of the word, since they don't want to acknowledge paternity of what they so recently set loose in the world.  Consequences like that are only supposed to come around long after the authors have shuffled off their individual mortal coils.)

Good.  They fucking deserve it.  Describing them as having their heads up their asses is far too polite.  But this is a family blog, and decency forbids me from saying what I really think about such complete idiocy.

Where are the villagers with the torches and pitchforks when you need them?

No wonder they can’t figure out who leaked the Dobbs decision. The parties in question have their heads too far up their asses.