It looks like we are going to find out if we have 5 votes for gun rights on the Supreme Court. I'm a bit less sanguine about that now than I was before the Texas case got shut down.
There are three boxes to which a free man can go when seeking to remain free.
He begins with the soap box -- advocating for retaining his liberty, using the 1st Amendment to protect his ability to speak. The media's bias (especially following the final capitulation of Fox News), combined with Big Tech's censorship of the internet, and pervasive cancel culture, have created a situation where speech is no longer free.
If speech alone is insufficient, he moves to the ballot box, voting for leaders who will correct the situation. While this may not resolve the problem immediately, so long as leaders are chosen by popular vote in free and fair elections there remains hope.
The presidential race in 2020 appears to have demonstrated that the ballot box is no longer free or fair.
That only leaves one box left. Pray we need not open it.
2nd Amendment Foundation sues over age limit on handgun purchases
With the current composition of the Supreme Court, this seems a promising way of advancing gun ownership rights. The age limit is arbitrary and contravenes a specific enumerated right. While there are other age limits other than 18 in effect (alcohol, 21) that case has so many special factors that it isn't much help.
This is hardly a surprise. Biden has signaled his opposition to gun rights by such things as hiring "Beto" as his gun control czar. But it's nice to have him on the record as opposing the Bill of Rights.
... and they did it because of red flag laws. They are also refusing to share their bodycam footage, because of course they are. After all, that footage would expose them as liars who shot and killed a man while he slept peacefully in bed next to his pregnant girlfriend, who they also shot.
The police are keeping the survivors under surveillance and threatening them with arrest if they attend protests.
Everyone involved here needs to go on trial for murder and violation of civil rights. But they won't. Because they are police.
It's a district court, meaning appeals are inevitable. But the ruling is narrow and based on sound Constitutional law, particularly as it is focused on possession in the home and the impossibility of compliance with the plain language of the law (eg, everyone in the home would need to have a FOID and have it on their person literally at all times).
I think the smart play by the antis would be to not appeal this. They might -- might! -- win one level up at the Illinois Supreme Court. But if this gets to the national Supreme Court, it tracks so closely to Heller that I have to image the statute is doomed -- and that would put at risk similar statutes in other states.
But, of course, they already have.
We're likely to find out what our new Justices think of the 2nd Amendment sooner rather than later.
Detroit requires background checks... on ammunition?
The legislation requires a mental health check and limits the quantities that can be bought at one time. It will, obviously, be completely ineffective.
Retired Justice Stevens suggests Supreme Court may advance gun rights
First the factual aspect. Assuming it's accurate, it confirms something the gun rights community has long suspected. (I don't particularly doubt the accuracy of the claim, although Stevens may be overstating his own role as as persuasive force...)
Now the facts.
We don't know where the current court sits on gun rights. Roberts has demonstrated squishy behavior before. Kennedy was replaced with Kavanaugh, presumably a solid 2nd Amendment vote, but Trump's first pick Gorsuch replaced Scalia (solid pro-gun vote) with a presumably solid pro-gun vote. Neither Kavanaugh nor Gorsuch have really been tested yet and Roberts is untrustworthy. We're probably better off with Kennedy replaced. But we need to win one more to feel secure, and even then, we can't count on the new Justices until we see how they vote.
Since Stevens is clearly trying to stoke panic here, let me rebut.
Gun free zone laws around schools have stopped precisely zero school shootings. As with other places declared gun free, criminals view them as soft targets. The only people deterred from carrying in such zones are the honest, law-abiding people who you would want to have a gun in case of such an attack.
"Laws intended to keep firearms out of the hands of especially dangerous individuals" has a couple possible meanings. Do they mean felons? Most felons will be able to get a gun as easily as they can get drugs, ie, illegally. Challenges to the core of felon-in-possession laws seem unlikely in the near future, though we will likely see nibbles around the edges for people acting in self-defense, whose crimes were not violent in nature, and who have been rehabilitated into society. Do they mean people like the Parkland shooter, who should have been on the naughty list but was not due to law enforcement failures? Law enforcement will have failures no matter what laws you pass. Do they mean people like the man who died at the hands of police in Maryland recently? How many innocent people need to die because one of their in-laws didn't like them owning a gun?