Supreme Court will rule on Second Amendment case

By JIM MATTHEWS

www.OutdoorNewsService.com

A New York City law prohibiting the transportation of licensed handguns inside or outside of the city has been challenged in two lower courts and will now be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds it violates the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

The original case was filed by the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and three gun owners against the City of New York on the basis that the law unconstitutionally interferes with their right to gun ownership and their right to travel.

Handguns are banned in New York unless you have a permit, but the law goes well beyond merely requiring a permit.

“The City… bans its residents from transporting a handgun to any place outside city limits -- even if the handgun is unloaded and locked in a container separate from its ammunition, and even if the owner seeks to transport it only to a second home for the core constitutionally protected purpose of self-defense,” wrote the gun owners group to the Supreme Court.

The restrictive law also only allows in-city transport of handguns to and from one of the seven licensed gun ranges in the City.

The law has been upheld twice in lower courts. The challenge was originally brought in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where the case was dismissed. The challengers appealed to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals which upheld the District Court’s dismissal. Appealed to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land has agreed to review the lower court decisions.

This, of course, has the left in a tizzy that the Supreme Court will hear this case since the appointment of Brett Cavanaugh, the new conservative justice that is expected to tilt the court dramatically back to a strict interpretation of the Constitution. The fact the court will actually uphold the Constitution that guarantees the right to keep and bear firearms is mind boggling to those in our society who see no need for firearms.

Leading the parade of ignorance over defending this moronic law was the New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said the city would vigorously defend the city’s law.

“We need the laws that we have that protect against guns being on our streets and we will fight to protect ourselves, that’s the bottom line,” said de Blasio.

Dissecting what de Blasio said shows the lunacy of this type of gun control. He doesn’t want guns on the street, and somehow thinks restricting their ownership and accessibility from law abiding citizens is a move to “protect ourselves.” This is in one breath. In the next breath, he deploys a giant law enforcement force with guns to “protect ourselves” on those same streets and in most homes that do not have firearms. That is the definition of an oxymoron.

The Supreme Court’s most recent reviews of cases relevant to the Second Amendment were in 2008 and 2010. In the 2008 Heller Case, there was a challenge on the District of Columbia’s total ban on handguns and its requirement that all firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional -- even when necessary for self-defense. The high court’s landmark ruling held that the Second Amendment was violated by denying the basic right to own firearms and the right to self-defense.

In 2010, the court heard a challenge to Chicago’s ban on possession of handguns. Again, it reiterating the fundamental view that laws by state and local governments cannot deny individual rights outlined in the Constitution.

In the intervening years since the Chicago challenge, the court has passed on hearing other cases that would have given the court an opportunity to expand case law and solidify the sanctity of gun ownership. President Trump’s appointment of judges Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh has assured that more of these cases will be heard in the coming years, and that the court is regaining its sanity in the protection of individual rights.

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Jim Matthews is a syndicated Southern California-based outdoor reporter and columnist. He can be reached via e-mail at odwriter@verizon.net or by phone at 909-887-3444.