SCOTUS gun nuts

[Rach3]

And with the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and even post-Buffalo,et.al., comes this prediction from the New Yorker Magazine today, another " Dark Days Ahead " :


May 22, 2022
During the Supreme Court oral arguments last November, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., et al. v. Bruen, a major gun-control case, Justice Clarence Thomas and Barbara Underwood, New York’s solicitor general, had an exchange about the kinds of place a person might carry a gun. “It’s one thing to talk about Manhattan or N.Y.U.’s campus,” Thomas said. “It’s another to talk about rural upstate New York.” The individual plaintiffs in the case, a challenge to New York’s licensing requirements for carrying a concealed pistol in public, live in Rensselaer County, which, Underwood told Thomas, is more “intermediate” than rural. It’s “not that far from Albany,” she said. “And it contains the City of Troy and a university and a downtown shopping district.” There was an echo of those words on May 14th, as reports came in of a shooting in upstate New York: if Payton S. Gendron, from the small town of Conklin, which is near a university, had driven two and a half hours northeast, he would have ended up in Troy. Instead, he drove more than three hours northwest, to Buffalo, where he killed ten people at a Tops supermarket...

The New York State Rifle decision, which is expected by the end of June, could make the rules even looser. It has the potential to be the most significant—and, depending on how broadly it is written, most disastrous—gun-law decision in a decade. The ruling should arrive around the same time as the one in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that is expected to overturn Roe v. Wade. Both cases are the product of decades of advocacy on the right. New York State Rifle is a long-awaited successor to District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark 2008 decision that enshrined gun ownership as an individual right under the Second Amendment, rather than as the primarily militia- or community-based right that courts had long understood it to be. Under the New York law—six other states have similar statutes—people who want a license to carry a concealed pistol in public for self-defense must have jobs that make them targets (judges, bank messengers) or show “proper cause,” meaning a need specific to them (for example, a person subject to a particular threat) rather than a general fear of crime. The plaintiffs argued that it is illegitimate under Heller to ask people to explain why they should be granted a license. More broadly, their view is that not just owning a gun but carrying it in public places is a right that should be limited only in extraordinary circumstances…

Heller does allow for some gun regulation, but it is not clear about how much, which is why New York State Rifle presents such an opportune opening for those who’d prefer as little as possible. The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Paul Clement, argued that an injustice is being perpetrated against New York gun owners, because they can’t walk around with their weapons as easily as gun owners in Arizona can. Thomas’s comment about urban and rural New York is not a sign that the conservatives would uphold gun laws focussed on cities. Indeed, Justice Samuel Alito offered the view that carrying a concealed weapon on the subway might make sense for “people who work late at night in Manhattan,” and wondered why they shouldn’t be able to easily do so…

In the oral arguments, Clement strongly objected to the notion that New York has any legitimate reason to discourage the proliferation of guns. “In a country with the Second Amendment as a fundamental right, simply having more firearms cannot be a problem,” he said. He’s wrong about that. The horror in Buffalo is a reminder that it is a very American problem. ♦

I'll refrain from further comment. Thank goodness for cheap red wine ( although , thanks to inflation and supply chain issues, my Penfolds Oz shiraz, Argentine Ruta 22 malbec, and Spanish La Roca granacha are each up about $2 per 750 ml. ).

[maestrob]

New York City has been a haven from guns, yet just yesterday another man was shot to death on our subways, the gunman fleeing as police swarmed the car where the shooting took place. He has yet to be apprehended. Guns come in to the city from all over, and our police work tirelessly at finding them and disarming those who would do harm.

Imagine what life would be like here if people were allowed to carry firearms openly, which is what SCOTUS gun nuts seem to want here.

IN the 1970's, I used to ride the subways to work in a mall in Queens where I was store manager for a menswear chain. Passing through 34th St. and Times Square (42nd Street) stops I would automatically look up from my reading to check out who was getting on the train. I lived in fear during those years, but couldn't afford not to ride the train. Now I worry about a return to those days. We're not there yet, but it's getting closer every day.

[Rach3]

From AxiosCloser tonight:

"The news of Dan's passing in this violent attack in the city that so many of our people call home comes as a shock to all of us."
— Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon in a letter to employees on the death of Daniel Enriquez, a member of the firm's investment research team, in a subway shooting Sunday morning.

( Rach3: Goldman is one of the firms that had been insisting all employees return full-time to the physical offices, COVID or not. This was a Sunday,no idea but wouldn't be unheard of for Wall Street'ers to work on Sunday. Even if not here, what a tragedy. )