Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

51
DispositionMatrix wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:41 am The New York County Lawyers Association in support of the state:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/ ... 20-843.pdf
The core right of people to protect themselves
identified in Heller is implicated only marginally, if
at all, by a law that rationally limits the
circumstances under which guns can be carried
outside one’s home or business, such as on subways,
buses, crowded city streets, and public parks and
buildings, including in the vicinity of courthouses
and government buildings, by requiring a showing of
proper cause.

As New Yorkers, we urge a recognition of the
special problems associated with the carrying of
concealed weapons in densely populated urban
areas. As an organization whose membership
includes lawyers and judges, we ask this Court to
imagine a New York where anyone could carry a gun
in or near the courthouse, or in close proximity to a
government building or to an attorney’s office or
home.

Imagine a New York City where concealed
weapons are ubiquitous. Imagine a hot, muggy
afternoon in Times Square where armed strangers
collide with one another, even inadvertently, while
rushing to a crowded office building, restaurant, or
theater. It is not hard to imagine a wayward glance,
or an exchange of words, escalating into a firefight.
More fear mongering.
Image
Image

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

54
sikacz wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:01 am
DispositionMatrix wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:41 am The New York County Lawyers Association in support of the state:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/ ... 20-843.pdf
The core right of people to protect themselves
identified in Heller is implicated only marginally, if
at all, by a law that rationally limits the
circumstances under which guns can be carried
outside one’s home or business, such as on subways,
buses, crowded city streets, and public parks and
buildings, including in the vicinity of courthouses
and government buildings, by requiring a showing of
proper cause.

As New Yorkers, we urge a recognition of the
special problems associated with the carrying of
concealed weapons in densely populated urban
areas. As an organization whose membership
includes lawyers and judges, we ask this Court to
imagine a New York where anyone could carry a gun
in or near the courthouse, or in close proximity to a
government building or to an attorney’s office or
home.

Imagine a New York City where concealed
weapons are ubiquitous. Imagine a hot, muggy
afternoon in Times Square where armed strangers
collide with one another, even inadvertently, while
rushing to a crowded office building, restaurant, or
theater. It is not hard to imagine a wayward glance,
or an exchange of words, escalating into a firefight.
More fear mongering.

Yes, those same lawyers who argue for nanny state laws will turn around and argue that the police are under no obligation to protect you.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

55
highdesert wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:32 am
sikacz wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:01 am
DispositionMatrix wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:41 am The New York County Lawyers Association in support of the state:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/ ... 20-843.pdf
The core right of people to protect themselves
identified in Heller is implicated only marginally, if
at all, by a law that rationally limits the
circumstances under which guns can be carried
outside one’s home or business, such as on subways,
buses, crowded city streets, and public parks and
buildings, including in the vicinity of courthouses
and government buildings, by requiring a showing of
proper cause.

As New Yorkers, we urge a recognition of the
special problems associated with the carrying of
concealed weapons in densely populated urban
areas. As an organization whose membership
includes lawyers and judges, we ask this Court to
imagine a New York where anyone could carry a gun
in or near the courthouse, or in close proximity to a
government building or to an attorney’s office or
home.

Imagine a New York City where concealed
weapons are ubiquitous. Imagine a hot, muggy
afternoon in Times Square where armed strangers
collide with one another, even inadvertently, while
rushing to a crowded office building, restaurant, or
theater. It is not hard to imagine a wayward glance,
or an exchange of words, escalating into a firefight.
More fear mongering.

Yes, those same lawyers who argue for nanny state laws will turn around and argue that the police are under no obligation to protect you.
When laws create contradictions, lawyers make money. Less lawyers might be a good idea, especially in legislatures.
Image
Image

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

56
sikacz wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:48 am
highdesert wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:32 am
sikacz wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:01 am
DispositionMatrix wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:41 am The New York County Lawyers Association in support of the state:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/ ... 20-843.pdf
More fear mongering.

Yes, those same lawyers who argue for nanny state laws will turn around and argue that the police are under no obligation to protect you.
When laws create contradictions, lawyers make money. Less lawyers might be a good idea, especially in legislatures.

Yes, legislatures and Congress are full of lawyers and between them they can't write decent laws or avoid breaking them.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

62
highdesert wrote: Fri Oct 01, 2021 9:16 am I was a card carrying member of the ACLU for years, but they became ideologically aligned. They are a private non-profit organization that is dependent on donors and like with politics, donors talk with their money.
I do take their point that minorities bear the brunt of gun violence. However, if there was ever a group that should champion root cause mitigation over infringement of rights, it's the ACLU.

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

63
sikacz wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:48 am
highdesert wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:32 am
sikacz wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:01 am
DispositionMatrix wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:41 am The New York County Lawyers Association in support of the state:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/ ... 20-843.pdf
More fear mongering.

Yes, those same lawyers who argue for nanny state laws will turn around and argue that the police are under no obligation to protect you.
When laws create contradictions, lawyers make money. Less lawyers might be a good idea, especially in legislatures.
To correct these problems, Shakespeare had it right, “ The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.”
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

64
featureless wrote: Fri Oct 01, 2021 9:22 am
highdesert wrote: Fri Oct 01, 2021 9:16 am I was a card carrying member of the ACLU for years, but they became ideologically aligned. They are a private non-profit organization that is dependent on donors and like with politics, donors talk with their money.
I do take their point that minorities bear the brunt of gun violence. However, if there was ever a group that should champion root cause mitigation over infringement of rights, it's the ACLU.
They care more for their donors money than addressing underlying causes. bloomie and his money are more important.
Image
Image

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

66
NYCLU: CONCEAL AND CARRY RESTRICTIONS CAN HELP PROTECT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
How and why are concealed carry restrictions a First Amendment issue?
States have many justifications for regulating the public carrying of weapons, concealed or otherwise, but one especially important justification is that such restrictions can facilitate civic engagement by promoting safety in public spaces and reducing the chances that any disagreements do not lead to lethal violence.
What is your response to concerns that criminal laws restricting the possession and carrying of guns continue to be disproportionately applied against Black people?
Black and Brown communities are undeniably disproportionately targeted, policed, and harmed by our criminal legal system, and there is no reason to believe gun law enforcement is any exception. We condemn such discrimination. Discriminatory law enforcement, of gun laws or any other laws, violates the Equal Protection Clause, and warrants serious attention from courts, the police, and our political leaders. But the question presented here is whether the Second Amendment prohibits the states from imposing any restrictions on carrying guns in public, regardless of their motivation or enforcement. Research shows that Black communities are disproportionately harmed by gun violence and that restrictions on gun possession can reduce that harm. Where criminal laws governing firearm possession are either motivated by discrimination or enforced in discriminatory ways, those laws should be challenged under the Equal Protection Clause and other anti-discrimination laws. At the same time, states should not be prohibited from enacting gun restrictions that can reduce injuries and deaths.
Have the ACLU and NYCLU historically advocated proactively on Second Amendment issues? If not, why now?
Until recently, Second Amendment jurisprudence was fairly well-settled and stable. Given the amendment’s reference to “a well regulated Militia” and “the security of a free State,” the courts for nearly 100 years took the position that the Second Amendment protected only a collective right, not an individual right. That longstanding view was upended in 2008 when the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller ruled that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to possess common firearms in the home for self-defense. Two years later, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court ruled that the Second Amendment also limited the ability of state and local governments to restrict possession of common firearms in the home. So Second Amendment jurisprudence at the Supreme Court is still in its infancy. This is only the third gun rights case the court will decide since the early 20th century.

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

67
When people don’t know who may be carrying a concealed weapon, but know that state law allows most, if not all, people to do so, they may rightly fear voicing opinions or assembling with groups that may be controversial or unpopular. One cannot know whether or when an armed person will turn to violence in response to a remark that offends them. Regulating concealed weapons in public promotes robust public debate and even harsh criticism by reducing the likelihood that heated arguments will escalate to intimidation and violence.
Research further shows that “most Americans are not impervious to the psychological effects of guns in their community, and that by a margin of more than three to one, more guns make others in the community feel less safe rather than more safe,” with women and members of minority groups substantially more likely to report feeling less safe than men and whites.
The ACLU that was always concerned with personal liberties like arguing that Nazis had the right to march through Skokie, IL, are now focused on what others feel. So if an individual right makes a community feel unsafe, they're on the side of the community.

Personally I'd never attend a protest that was likely to get violent. Sometimes people get caught up in marches or protests going about their own business and have the right to protect themselves.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

68
I believe the ACLU's main argument is that their concern is that as is stated the Black communities are disproportionately harmed by gun violence and that restrictions on gun possession can reduce that harm.

But what they refuse to see is that enacting such laws will not protect the good people from the bad, just make it harder for the poorer people to possess them for their protection. And we all know the criminal element will not bother to follow the rules anyway.

Also this:
This historically-supported interest makes
normative sense, and the Court should therefore
respect New York’s choice to regulate public carry in
the interest of furthering public safety. Self government depends on the ability of the people to
participate fully in civic, political, and economic life.
People need to feel safe to vote, to go to school and
work, to walk the streets, and to assemble, associate,
and speak freely in public. While these rights have
not always been equally available to all, the goal of
maintaining the peace to allow all people to
participate in public life, including to speak out on
political, religious, and other sensitive topics, is
critically important to our democracy. States have a
compelling interest in assuring their populace that
they can do so, even in furtherance of controversial
causes, without fear that doing so will prompt lethal
violence. States should have leeway to determine
that unregulated concealed carry will undermine that
confidence.
But isn't this why we have a police force? Still, I believe any person just cannot rely on a police force to protect them at all times.
That said I do believe some public places should have those restrictions like government buildings.

Anyway it should be interesting to watch. Wish we could see it live.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

69
In a 2005 case.
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.

The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/poli ... otect.html

Just one of many SCOTUS cases restating it. Police protect society, they are not our personal bodyguards. In 2018 Parkland students tried to sue the sheriff and the school district.
A federal judge in South Florida tossed out a lawsuit filed by more than a dozen students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., who said they were traumatized by a mass shooting there in February and that county officials should have protected them.

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom said neither the school nor sheriff’s deputies had a legal obligation to protect students from the alleged shooter, Nikolas Cruz, who is accused of killing 17 people at the school Feb. 14. Her reasoning? The students were not in state custody, the Sun Sentinel reported.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/educatio ... -shooting/

But NYCLU's reliance on the community feeling safe could be applied to BLM marches where people have said they didn't feel safe. BLM has the right to protest even though it makes people fee "unsafe", like someone can openly carry a firearm if it's legal.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

71
Here FiveThirtyEight piles on in a lament of the RKBA as it relates to this case.

Text:
The Second Amendment Didn’t Protect Your Right To Own A Gun Until 2008
A little over a decade ago, the Supreme Court redefined the Second Amendment. Before then, in the eyes of the federal courts, the amendment protected the rights of state militias to bear arms — not the rights of individual Americans. That all changed in 2008 with the stroke of a pen. And this November, the Supreme Court has the chance to expand the meaning of the Second Amendment yet again, potentially allowing more concealed weapons onto the streets of major cities like Los Angeles and New York.

In our new video series, “Reigning Supreme,” senior legal reporter Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux explores the court’s power — and reveals the hidden ways the justices affect American life — through the issues on the docket this year. In this first episode, she digs into the history of the Second Amendment and the way politics influence the Supreme Court’s decisions.

This video is part of “Rethinking Gun Violence,” an ABC News series examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it.
Video:
https://abcnews.go.com/fivethirtyeight/ ... t-80824464

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

74
From US v Miller 1939
The signification attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. 'A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline.' And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/307/174

This kind a fucks the "only militias get guns." The people were expected to show up armed if called. The working assumption was the right was the peoples', just like that silly Constitution said. Otherwise, there'd be no point in having a militia.

Re: Right to Carry petition to SCOTUS

75
A New Republic article at the beginning of the month.
The Supreme Court begins its new term on Monday with no shortage of high-stakes cases to wrestle with. One of them is New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, where the justices will consider the constitutionality of a New York law that dispenses concealed-carry licenses very sparingly, mostly to ex-cops and a select group of famous celebrities. As one might expect, gun rights advocates and gun-control groups alike are jockeying for the court to adopt an interpretation of the Second Amendment that fits their vision for the right to bear arms. Beneath that surface, however, a more intriguing debate about the Second Amendment is taking place between two groups that usually aren’t at odds.

On one side is the American Civil Liberties Union and its New York state counterpart, which contend that the state law is justified to protect First Amendment rights in the public sphere. On the other side are a coalition of New York–based public defender groups who contend that the law actually gives cops a license to discriminate and harm indigent and minority New Yorkers who try to exercise their Second Amendment rights. The result is two starkly different visions of how the law affects civil rights, public safety, and the Constitution.

Bruen is slated to produce the first major Supreme Court ruling on the scope of the Second Amendment in nearly a decade. (It was previously known as New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Corlett.) As I noted when the court agreed to hear the case earlier this year, the dispute revolves around New York’s highly restrictive scheme for obtaining a concealed-carry license. The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association and two plaintiffs who failed to obtain licenses argue that the Second Amendment protects a right to carry arms outside the home and that New York is violating that right. The state, for its part, counters that its law fits within traditional restrictions on gun possession and is necessary to reduce crime.

But it might be the friend-of-the-court briefs that provide more insight on the stakes of this case. The ACLU’s official position on the Second Amendment is that it protects a collective right to self-defense and not an individual one, a stance it admits is at odds with current constitutional law. “For seven decades, the Supreme Court’s 1939 decision in United States v. Miller was widely understood to have endorsed that view,” the group stated in an explainer on its website. “This position is currently under review and is being updated by the ACLU National Board in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in D.C. v. Heller in 2008.” A review of that page’s history on the Internet Archive shows that it has not been updated since at least 2016, if not longer.

Like many discussions of the Second Amendment and its breadth, the ACLU’s brief discusses the history of the right to bear arms in Anglo-American law. The organization argued that English and early American laws often limited the public’s right to carry weapons in public “in order to preserve the peace necessary for a robust civic life.” It noted that in the English legal tradition, the idea of the “King’s Peace” had emerged as the mediating force of everyday life, with the rule of law supplanting violence or the threat thereof. “Laws protecting public spaces from the threat presented by people carrying weapons are as old as the concept of ‘the peace’ itself,” it added.

Though medieval English legal theory might seem ill-fitting for contemporary American life, the ACLU argued that restrictions on carrying arms in public are just as important, if not more so, in a modern democracy. “Self-government depends on the ability of the people to participate fully in civic, political, and economic life,” the ACLU argued in its brief. “People need to feel safe to vote, to go to school and work, to walk the streets, and to assemble, associate, and speak freely in public. While these rights have not always been equally available to all, the goal of maintaining the peace to allow all people to participate in public life, including to speak out on political, religious, and other sensitive topics, is critically important to our democracy.”

In addition to historical evidence, the ACLU also pointed to more contemporary examples. The group cited reports that some participants in the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill consciously decided to leave their guns at home beforehand because of the District of Columbia’s strict laws on carrying firearms in public. Other recent instances of armed groups carrying out political activities also brought an undercurrent of urgency to the ACLU’s argument. “As these examples make vivid, states have a sound basis for determining that liberal public carry may jeopardize the safety vital to a robust civic life,” they concluded.

Siding with gun rights groups in a friend-of-the-court brief is a coalition of New York–based public defender groups: Black Attorneys of Legal Aid, the Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services, and seven county public defense offices. “For our clients, New York’s licensing regime renders the Second Amendment a legal fiction,” they told the court. “Worse, virtually all our clients whom New York prosecutes for exercising their Second Amendment right are Black or Hispanic. And that is no accident. New York enacted its firearm licensing requirements to criminalize gun ownership by racial and ethnic minorities. That remains the effect of its enforcement by police and prosecutors today.”

A large portion of the groups’ brief is devoted to stories about their clients’ run-ins with the statute in question. One of them, Jasmine Phillips, is a veteran from Texas who brought a pistol licensed to her in that state to New York while visiting family. According to the brief, officers pulled Phillips out of her car without warning while it was parked, put her in a chokehold and threw her to the ground, then searched the car and found the gun. Though the case was eventually dismissed, her arrest and weeks-long detention on Rikers Island had long-lasting effects. Phillips lost her job and her car, her landlord in Texas terminated her lease, and a Texas judge cited the arrest when ruling against her in a later child-custody hearing.

Another client, Gary Smith, is a former New York City employee who retired after a cancer diagnosis. According to the brief, NYPD officers charged him with unlawful possession after searching his home and finding a “loaded” handgun even though the ammunition was stored in a separate bag. “The prosecutors accused him of possessing a loaded firearm with intent to use it unlawfully because New York presumes that intent from unlicensed possession alone,” the groups told the court. “New York’s law considered the firearm ‘loaded’ because the ammunition was in the same area as the firearm. And the ‘home’ exception … did not apply to him because he had previously been convicted of a class A misdemeanor for jumping a subway turnstile.”

Other stories depict other ordinary citizens at the mercy of police officers who can wield the state’s laws against unlicensed gun ownership against them with unfettered discretion and relative impunity. Though the two briefs do not address each other, it’s hard not to read the defenders’ conclusions as a rebuttal to the ACLU’s public safety argument. “What these stories and our experience illustrate is that New York’s licensing requirements—which cause criminal penalties for unlicensed possession—themselves have controversial public safety implications,” the public defenders groups argued. They noted that it can also be considered unsafe to lose one’s job and/or children after an arrest, or to be sent to New York’s troubled and dangerous jails and prisons to await trial or serve a sentence.

Some of the court’s conservative justices have written extensively about the Second Amendment as a civil right in the more popularly understood sense, a framework not typically adopted by their liberal colleagues. While serving on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in one case that state and federal laws that criminalize firearm possession by people with felony convictions may not be constitutional. She noted that there was no evidence of founding-era laws that imposed similar punishments when the Second Amendment was drafted. “Felons serving a term of years did not suffer civil death; their rights were suspended but not destroyed,” Barrett wrote. “In sum, a felony conviction and the loss of all rights did not necessarily go hand-in-hand.”

In the 2010 case McDonald v. Chicago, which applied Heller to the states, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote at length in a concurring opinion on the historical context of nineteenth-century state laws on gun possession. He noted that many of the restrictions, particularly in Southern states, were designed to suppress uprisings by enslaved people and free Black Americans. After the Civil War, Radical Republicans in Congress drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to protect emancipated Americans’ civil rights in the South, including the right to bear arms. Those efforts failed in part because the Supreme Court sapped the Fourteenth Amendment’s strength in the Slaughterhouse Cases and United States v. Cruikshank during Reconstruction.

Tragedy soon followed. The high court’s ruling in Cruikshank in particular “enabled private forces, often with the assistance of local governments, to subjugate the newly freed slaves and their descendants through a wave of private violence designed to drive blacks from the voting booth and force them into peonage, an effective return to slavery,” Thomas wrote. “Without federal enforcement of the inalienable right to keep and bear arms, these militias and mobs were tragically successful in waging a campaign of terror against the very people the Fourteenth Amendment had just made citizens.”

The ACLU did not ignore this grim history. Its brief noted that while many states curtailed gun rights in discriminatory ways after Reconstruction, some also imposed restrictions on carrying firearms in public in ways that affected white Americans as well. The ACLU argued that these quandaries are best left to the other branches to wrestle with. “Discriminatory law enforcement, of gun laws, or any other laws, is an Equal Protection [Clause] problem, and warrants serious attention from courts, the police, and our political leaders,” the group argued. “The question before the Court in this case, however, is whether the Second Amendment permits the state to regulate concealed carry.” The court’s answer—and which of the two paths it took to get there—could be clear as soon as next spring.
https://newrepublic.com/article/163823/ ... -aclu-guns
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests