OSD 41: 2A legit 2 quit
“I think they are going to be really mad,” said Tom Goldstein, a constitutional lawyer and founder of SCOTUSblog, said of the justices. “You can’t just evade judicial review. … In the end, they want to hold argument so they can yell at New York and vent a bit and write an opinion.”
— ABC News story on NYSRPA v. NYC, which goes before the Supreme Court today
Today the Supreme Court hears oral argument in their first big 2A case since 2010's McDonald v. Chicago. The eventual ruling is likely to be a big problem for gun control laws, and the groups that push for those laws are doing a big PR push to turn the impending loss into a fundraising opportunity (which the article linked above being a good example of the talking points).
We've talked a lot about this case, NYSRPA v. NYC, so won't rehash that too much here. But oral argument transcripts will be out by the end of the day, and the audio will be out at the end of the week, so follow us on Twitter for analyses of both.
Also, big shoutout to @rob99711, who's all over this stuff and will be an excellent follow this week. (The pull-quote at the top of this email is also from his Twitter feed.)
A couple other resources about this case:
SCOTUSblog. A general legal blog, but they've been tracking this case closely and recently published a great back-and-forth symposium on the case. Be especially sure to check out the post from David Kopel and Randy Barnett.
Lastly, we'll leave off with an insight from /u/RichardRogers, on the formal logical flaw in the idea that the Second Amendment can in fact be interpreted to require gun control. (This is an idea that gun control orgs have been trying to popularize recently, to get out ahead of the legal damage that this case is likely to do for them.)
Long quote, but a good one. Bold emphasis added.
“It’s just a completely broken misunderstanding (or an intentional misapplication) of how the US Constitution works or even what its purpose is. The Constitution is a set of rules that define and limit the powers of the federal government, not a carte blanche guarantee against crime. In this case that's not only not what the Constitution is for but the exact opposite, since it specifically prohibits the type of laws they're trying to use it to justify.”
“Any document that purports to guarantee you safe from crime, let alone a crime that's so incredibly rare it makes national headline news every single time it happens, is fundamentally flawed because that's an impossible promise to keep. There's a principle in formal logic called explosion where if you assume a single statement to be true that's actually false, you can construct some chain of logic to fallaciously ‘prove’ any other falsehood. An untrue premise is like an infection that can spread without limit.”
This week's links
Being Red-Flagged: An Experience
A Kafkaesque account of what it's like to be a bullied kid that gets red-flagged.
Ohio knife law reform about to get a hearing in the statehouse
Knife laws have been an unsung bright spot over the past few years. This will clear up a lot of legal gray area if it becomes law. Check out Knife Rights. They've been doing yeoman's work out of the limelight, quietly making progress state by state.
Deep-dive on weapon lights
Model-by-model breakdown of the technical pros and cons. Good stuff.
Shield Arms S15 mag: 15 rounds in the Glock 43X
Review from James Reeves of TFB TV. Cool to see small companies step up to innovate when big companies are slow to. Innovation is how we make better products, better products are how we make more gun owners, and more gun owners are how we win.
"Owning Liberals" is dumb and your argument is bad…How we can do better.
A level-headed guide on how to actually persuade people to agree with you.
DGU with a Glock in a van in Miami
Wild DGU this week out of Miami, against a robber with an AK.
The Boogaloo: Extremists’ New Slang Term for a Coming Civil War
Not a good article, but an excellent case study for this Michael Crichton quote:
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward — reversing cause and effect. I call these the ‘wet streets cause rain’ stories. Paper’s full of them.”
“In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
One more thing about the @whiskey_warrior_556 fiasco
That folks mobilized in this particular case turns out to have been a mistake. But a key takeaway that hasn't been widely discussed is that it illustrated that folks can mobilize. When the cause they're mobilizing for is worthy, that's incredibly powerful.
/u/tablinum had a good take on this (excerpt below, but worth reading the whole comment):
“I'm not saying people should have immediately started throwing molotov cocktails at the courthouse, but it would be a better world if two dozen cops knew they'd have to explain themselves to two hundred armed citizens rather than knowing they could just roll over the one guy whose house they showed up at in the middle of the night. At that point, it's up to the fuzz whether they behave themselves or provoke a revolt. Every police assault on a citizen's home should provoke a community to come out and make them justify their actions. I want cops to tell their brass where to shove a confiscation order or no-knock drug raid because they're afraid to execute it, not assume they can do whatever they want and the neighbors will refuse to get involved.”