Gun Free Zone

Of course the 9th Circuit Court, aka the 9th Circus voted against concealed carry.

Here’s the problem, the 7th Circuit came to the opposite conclusion in Moore v. Madigan.

We have two Circuit Court decisions in conflict.

I think SCOTUS might have to get involved in this.

It seems likely we're going to have to find out how far we can trust Trump's justices on gun rights. Like the original poster, I don't trust Roberts. That puts us at 5-4... if no one else defects.

Gateway Pundit

The US Supreme Court dismissed President Trump’s final election challenge on Monday without comment.

What a dark day for America.
Democrats are now allowed to make any changes to election law whenever they feel necessary without consequence.

The Supreme Court also threw out Attorney Lin Wood’s election challenge without comment.

Gateway Pundit's take is a little pessimistic, but only a little. The court refusing without comment (denial of certiori) doesn't set legal precedent, so in theory the same issues could come up again and be taken up by the court at a later date.

In practice, the Roberts court blinked and until the court slate changes for the better, we're not likely to see any improvement.

Washington Examiner

The Supreme Court on Friday listed several high-profile election lawsuits for consideration at its mid-February conference.

The cases include challenges to the 2020 election from Trump-aligned lawyers Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, as well as Republican Rep. Mike Kelly's Pennsylvania lawsuit. Nearly every lawsuit takes issue with the expanded use of mail-in ballots by many states.

The decision came after the court declined to fast-track all election-related litigation in early January.

I fear the outcome in these cases is now preordained. Had these cases been decided before the election, their decisions could be made honestly. Now? If the court rules that Biden's wins in several of the states was actually illegitimate... how do you uninstall a president who is occupying the White House?

You don't, absent impeachment, which will not happen due to Democratic control of both houses of Congress (or the 25th Amendment, which doesn't apply here). But if the Supreme Court rules honestly that the rules were illegally changed and the election was invalid, it will tear apart the country and likely spark civil war.

The only justice I trust to have that level of fuck-you is Clarence Thomas. The others are unknown quantities or known squishes.

The court has destroyed its own credibility.

Of Arms and the Law

Caniglia v. Strom, docket here. Police, summoned after a non-violent domestic argument, searched the house without a warrant and seized two legally-owned handguns, then refused to return them. The question is whether the "community care taking" exception to the warrant and probable cause requirement extends to the home. There's a big split in the Circuits, and the Court granted cert.

It seems to be moving quickly: respondents' briefs are not due until Feb. 11, but argument is set for March 24.

Looks like we'll find out of the court has found the stomach to stand up for gun rights. From the description, this case should really be a slam dunk. No violence, no crime, unwarranted search of a home, confiscation of property that was never returned. If "but it was a gun!" can legally justify all that, the Constitution is a dead letter.

4-4 split leaves absurd lower court decision in place. We need Amy on the court to resolve these decisions without absurd ties. And we need Roberts to wake the fuck up and do his job, or else resign and publicly admit that the left has been blackmailing him. Seriously. In what sane universe do you count votes without postmarks that were received after the election? That is an invitation to fraud. And if those ballots decide the presidency... well, that's a nightmare scenario we don't need.

Biden stated recently he would have voted against the landmark DC v Heller case, which firmly established the 2nd Amendment as an individual rather than a collective right to arms. Presumably he would appoint Supreme Court judges who would vote similarly, which is probably why Biden refuses to release list of Supreme Court judges.

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.

Assuming the Senate actually goes into recess, this seems like a good idea. We really do not want a Supreme Court tied 4-4 during election season. It does open things up to some legal risks; recess appointments have been challenged on various grounds and Congress has been less than willing to admit it is in recess in recent years, precisely to block such appointments. It would also risk reducing the urgency of a permanent confirmation vote.

But the payoff of a full court that can resolve election issues decisively may spare us from a terrible drawn-out election season of rioting and endlessly "discovered" ballots.

If the Senate does not promptly confirm Trump's nominee permanently, Trump should make the recess appointment so the court can function in the meantime.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died of complications from cancer. I disagreed with her on many things, but I won't celebrate her death.

However, with only a few weeks to go before the election, the left will see the chance of losing control of the Supreme Court for real. (Despite the supposedly conservative majority, enough Justices go wobbly that the left has had significant influence on cases that matter to them). They will go absolutely crazy to prevent Trump from successfully nominating and confirming a replacement. And if they manage to block a confirmation before the election, the election itself will have massively increased levels of violence, fraud, riots, and everything else. The left will see this election as being for all the marbles. The right, among which I count myself, will see a chance to make lasting gains on goals long denied.

This election was already tense, with figures on the left openly threatening succession and civil war if they lose. This will only increase the tensions. Civil war is now a real possibility.

She's been having chemotherapy since May.

Think Progress

According to Liptak, Stevens “helped persuade Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was in the majority, to ask for ‘some important changes’ to Justice Scalia’s opinion.”

The result was a passage providing that Heller should not “be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

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...)

Think Progress

The upshot of Stevens’ highly unusual revelation — justices, even retired justices, rarely disclose internal Court deliberations — is that there are probably no longer five votes on the Supreme Court who support this language in Heller. A wide range of firearm restrictions intended to keep firearms out of the hands of especially dangerous individuals or to keep them out of “sensitive places such as schools” could soon fall.

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?

Sebastian quoting Kavanaugh

In my judgment, both D.C.’s ban on semi-automatic rifles and its gun registration requirement are unconstitutional under Heller.

In Heller, the Supreme Court held that handguns – the vast majority of which today are semi-automatic – are constitutionally protected because they have not traditionally been banned and are in common use by law-abiding citizens. There is no meaningful or persuasive constitutional distinction between semi-automatic handguns and semi- automatic rifles. Semi-automatic rifles, like semi-automatic handguns, have not traditionally been banned and are in common use by law-abiding citizens for self-defense in the home, hunting, and other lawful uses. Moreover, semi- automatic handguns are used in connection with violent crimes far more than semi-automatic rifles are. It follows from Heller’s protection of semi-automatic handguns that semi-automatic rifles are also constitutionally protected and that D.C.’s ban on them is unconstitutional. (By contrast, fully automatic weapons, also known as machine guns, have traditionally been banned and may continue to be banned afterHeller.)1

Aside from the bit of dicta about machine guns, which is probably an unfortunate necessity at this point, that's a fairly solid position. We still don't know who was the weak point on the court preventing 2nd Amendment cases from being heard and decided properly, but if it was Kennedy, his replacement will be a positive change. We can't be certain of forward progress until at least one of the remaining left-wing judges is replaced.

I don't claim to have looked into this set of nominees closely, simply for lack of time and interest. Some think Hardiman or Kethledge would have been better on the 2nd. That may be true. But I think Kavanaugh will be willing to advance the court's jurisprudence in this issue in the right direction, and that's enough.

Power Line has the details, along with inappropriate snark about him being the Chief Justice. He's not. Roberts is. The retirement is effective July 31st, meaning we have a month or so to argue about who replaces him. Some on the left are already screaming about Gorsuch, but holding an open seat on the Supreme Court for more than two years and then hoping to win the election may be a bridge too far. I expect the Democrats will try to hold past the midterms in the hopes of getting the Senate majority, which would allow them to completely block a replacement justice and force Trump to bargain with his nominee.

Whether McConnell will allow them to do that is another matter.

The Democrats are already going nuts, with mob violence and stalking of administration officials, pervasive threats from deranged individuals, and even occasional acts of politically motivated violence. This will only raise the stakes. They are going to go batshit crazy.