NJ's tricks to make sure gun owners can't carry guns is failing, just like NY's did
dead0man:
ReasonQuote
After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right to bear arms last June, New Jersey responded the same way New York did: by making it easier to obtain a carry permit but much harder to use it. "Although an individual seeking to carry a handgun for self-defense is no longer required to show a 'justifiable need,'" U.S. District Judge Renée Marie Bumb notes, "the State's expansive list of 'sensitive places' effectively prohibits the carrying of that handgun virtually everywhere in New Jersey." The message to gun owners, Bumb says, was pretty clear: "leave your Second Amendment rights and guns at home."
The preliminary injunction that Bumb issued yesterday, which follows a temporary restraining order that she granted in January, is the latest judicial rebuke of legislative attempts to defy the Supreme Court's June 23 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen while pretending to comply with it. New Jersey politicians, like their counterparts in New York, are discovering that federal judges are not inclined to approve that transparent end run.
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"Remarkably," she writes, "despite numerous opportunities afforded by this Court to hold evidentiary hearings involving the presentation of evidence, the State called no witnesses. And despite assurances by the State that it would present sufficient historical evidence as required by Bruen to support each aspect of the new legislation, the State failed to do so."
New Jersey's lawyers instead offered the same "social science studies" that state legislators cited when they enacted sweeping restrictions on public possession of firearms. Bumb deems that evidence "inapposite" because the state's regulations are "aimed primarily" not at "those who unlawfully possess firearms" but at "law-abiding, responsible citizens who satisfy detailed background and training requirements and whom the State seeks to prevent from carrying a firearm in public for self-defense."
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In response to Bruen, New Jersey legislators eliminated the state's "justifiable need" requirement for carry permits. But they simultaneously decreed that permit holders may not carry handguns in 25 categories of "sensitive places," including parks, zoos, museums, entertainment venues, casinos, medical facilities, "transportation hubs," businesses that serve alcohol, and the sites of public gatherings that require a government permit. The law's broadest category is "private property," where guns are presumptively prohibited unless the owner explicitly says they are allowed by posting "clear and conspicuous signage" or otherwise giving "express consent."
While permit holders are allowed to transport firearms in private vehicles, they must be "unloaded and contained in a closed and securely fastened case, gunbox, or locked unloaded in the trunk of the vehicle." As Bumb notes and the state conceded, those requirements make it impossible for motorists to use handguns for self-defense, although "the need for self-defense" may be especially "acute" in that context "given the State's unfortunately large number of carjackings."
Torie:
Yeah. Now one knows why I just step up to the plate an favor repealing the 2nd Amendment as a gun grabber. There is no good way to finesse the 2nd Amendment, except through what I would consider judicial activism.
Hopefully, NYS's and NYC's outstanding stats regarding the lowest gun deaths in the nation I believe, will not be eroded over time, and the places regress to the more Texas like levels of gun deaths. That would be most unfortunate.
Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself:
Quote from: Torie on May 18, 2023, 10:25:54 AM
Yeah. Now one knows why I just step up to the plate an favor repealing the 2nd Amendment as a gun grabber. There is no good way to finesse the 2nd Amendment, except through what I would consider judicial activism.
Hopefully, NYS's and NYC's outstanding stats regarding the lowest gun deaths in the nation I believe, will not be eroded over time, and the places regress to the more Texas like levels of gun deaths. That would be most unfortunate.
Isn't the second amendment protecting gun ownership as a right at all lowkey judicial activism?
Torie:
Quote from: Bergentrückung on May 18, 2023, 02:00:37 PM
Quote from: Torie on May 18, 2023, 10:25:54 AM
Yeah. Now one knows why I just step up to the plate an favor repealing the 2nd Amendment as a gun grabber. There is no good way to finesse the 2nd Amendment, except through what I would consider judicial activism.
Hopefully, NYS's and NYC's outstanding stats regarding the lowest gun deaths in the nation I believe, will not be eroded over time, and the places regress to the more Texas like levels of gun deaths. That would be most unfortunate.
Isn't the second amendment protecting gun ownership as a right at all lowkey judicial activism?
I agree with the point of view that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right, as opposed to a right to arm well regulated militias. The idea was that citizens should be skilled with arms so that when called to serve they would be competent. So no, I don't think SCOTUS was pushing the legal envelope. The liberal Lawrence Tribe has observed that the 2nd Amendment is a pain in the ass amendment, that he wished would go away. I agree with that.
politicallefty:
Quote from: Torie on May 18, 2023, 03:14:29 PM
I agree with the point of view that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right, as opposed to a right to arm well regulated militias. The idea was that citizens should be skilled with arms so that when called to serve they would be competent. So no, I don't think SCOTUS was pushing the legal envelope. The liberal Lawrence Tribe has observed that the 2nd Amendment is a pain in the ass amendment, that he wished would go away. I agree with that.
I haven't read Tribe's observations as to the 2nd Amendment, but I will say that the Court has already engaged in judicial activism by creating the standard that they did. The "history and traditions" test goes far beyond originalism. It supplants the text, ideals, and principles of the Constitution for something else entirely. The right-wing is giving the 2nd Amendment a deferential absoluteness that not even the First Amendment has from its most ardent absolutists.
The structure of the 2nd Amendment is unique in the Constitution with just one other exception (the Copyright Clause). The prefatory clause has essentially been read out of the Constitution by those on the right. I think they are wrong to do so. The text is there for a reason and it has meaning. You can read the 2nd Amendment as an individual right without ignoring the prefatory clause. That means that it is an individual right that can be regulated by the government. I think some people get caught up on the word militia, which meant something quite different than it does today. It's not that meaning has changed per se, just that most people think of militia in the context of the organized militia under the direct control of the government or rogue groups attempting to overthrow the government.
If you consider the 2nd Amendment in the context of the unorganized militia, which was at one point all able-bodied males within a specific age range, it makes better sense. I think it can be read that the Founders intended for the militia to be able-bodied men. That certainly would not comport with today's standards or the Fourteenth Amendment. In that case, it would make sense to read it as the adult citizenry. In that context, well-regulated must mean something more than the government organizing its own forces (i.e. the military and National Guard). The right can be regulated, but not regulated out of existence.
As for the self-defense argument, that is a right that belonged to the people long before 2nd Amendment. Self-defense was and is a right of the people under common law, such as through the castle doctrine.
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