Monday, April 26, 2021

The Question of “Self-Defense” Is An Interesting One

Is "self-defense" even specific? That is, can I invoke it as a reason for carrying a gun at all?  Do I need “self-defense” to go to the grocery store?  The mall?  The movie theater?  More likely I need it to go to a public school.

What is “self-defense”?  When does it arise?  When I step outside my door?  When a gun is pointed at me?  When I find myself in the middle of a mass shooting?

Basically, the question is this:
Although the answer to the question "Who shot first?" is not dispositive as to who is the "good" guy and who is the "bad" guy.

This is where the argument is coming from:

The justices said Monday they will review a lower-court ruling that upheld New York’s restrictive gun permit law. The court’s action follows mass shootings in recent weeks in Indiana, Georgia, Colorado and California.

The case probably will be argued in the fall. The court had turned down review of the issue in June, before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.

 ....

 Federal courts have largely upheld the permit limits. Last month an 11-judge panel of the federal appeals court in San Francisco rejected a challenge to Hawaii’s permit regulations in an opinion written by a conservative judge, Jay Bybee.

“Our review of more than 700 years of English and American legal history reveals a strong theme: government has the power to regulate arms in the public square,” Bybee wrote in a 7-4 decision for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

 ....

But Barrett has a more expansive view of gun rights than Ginsburg. She wrote a dissent in 2019, when she was a judge on the federal appeals court in Chicago, that argued that a conviction for a nonviolent felony — in this case, mail fraud — shouldn’t automatically disqualify someone from owning a gun. 

She said that her colleagues in the majority were treating the Second Amendment as a “second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” 

The "Bill of Rights" has magical powers not granted to the rest of the Constitution, only in the minds of the entirely credulous. The first 10 amendments are co-equal parts of the constitution along with the 14th Amendment, Articles I through III, and even the application, and then repeal, of Prohibition.  For a sitting judge to even raise that canard in a legal opinion is appalling.

And the question remains:  how does one distinguish carrying a gun for self-defense, from carrying a gun for a criminal purpose?
There's that, too. Then again, there's always that.
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2 comments:

  1. rustypickup3:16 PM

    A lot of evil is going to come from this case. I would not be surprised to see the conservative majority declare a constitutional right to self defense, which will then be used to knock down most gun control law because you never know when you will be threatened. I expect that there will be a general right to open carry, turning the country into an armed camp.

    I will let my paranoia fly, and say this will be how the conservative majority finally eviscerates Brown v. Board of Education. Since schools are public, there is a constitutional right to carry in schools. Parents with any means will end up pulling their kids from public schools and send them to private schools that can ban guns on campus. At that point opposition to vouchers will collapse and states will indirectly fund private schools, that will not be only able to ban guns, but discriminate on religious grounds. Only the poor will remain at public schools which will suffer even greater funding loss once most parents of means aren't sending their children.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rmj3:52 PM

      Welp, better'n lettin' the 2nd Amendment become a "second-class" right! Right?

      Lordelpus.

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