That was then. This is now. Now we all are waiting for the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen, an opinion that some court watchers say won’t come until sometime in late June. This case is the challenge to New York’s 108-year-old concealed handgun law. The challengers claim they shouldn’t have to show a special need to get a license to carry a gun that way. A majority of justices seemed skeptical of New York’s rationale for the law when they asked about it during oral argument last fall. But Bruen is just the start of what some lawyers and advocates say will be a relentless effort by the Court to transform gun regulation around the United States.
The Bruen decision will come weeks after another mass shooting, another spasm of gun violence, this time in Buffalo, New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul and state legislators are promising to expand the scope of gun regulations. Will the Buffalo massacre change anyone’s mind on the Court? Not likely. Nor will the massacre of 19 children and 2 teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. They were reportedly gunned down by an 18 year old who had just purchased his weapons in a state that has dramatically loosened gun laws in the past decade. It is harder for an 18 year old to get a driver’s license than a gun in Texas.
To get a sense of where we are now on the Second Amendment and where we are likely headed given the Court’s current makeup, I reached out to Darrell Miller, a professor at Duke Law School who is an expert on the Second Amendment and gun rights and regulations.
COHEN: Three days after the Capitol riot and insurrection, you gave a fascinating interview to Olivia Li at The Trace in which you talked about an insurrectionist theory of the Second Amendment. “There is always someone who thinks that tyranny is in the present” is the quote you once used to help describe the concept. It’s now been 15 months since January 6, 2021. What have you seen between now and then, among the hundreds of federal cases to arise involving the alleged rioters and insurrectionists, to support or undermine your old theory?
MILLER: If anything, the past 15 months have only reinforced my conviction that the normalization of threats of political violence in American society is undermining the foundation of American democracy. We’re learning through these prosecutions just how widespread and coordinated the attack on the Capitol actually was. We’re learning through the January 6 Committee how complicit a significant segment of the political, legal, and professional class was in supporting a multi-pronged attack on the peaceful transfer of power. Yet instead of seeing bipartisan condemnation of political violence, we’re witnessing ever more transparent appeals to it. I remain alarmed.
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