Tag: Bear Arms
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Should State Officials Receive Qualified Immunity for Creatively Resisting Bruen?
Unhappy with the Supreme Court’s decision in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, New York and New Jersey have passed laws designed to nullify Bruen’s practical effect. California and Maryland look set to join them. Before Bruen, these states denied most residents the ability to publicly carry handguns by making licenses to carry…
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Pretextually Eliminating the Right to Bear Arms through Gerrymandered Property Rules
When the Supreme Court required public school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education, some Southern jurisdictions resisted through legal chicanery. In Virginia, the Prince Edward County school district “closed” its public schools to avoid integration, while setting up government-funded private schools that were “private” in name only. The Supreme Court was not amused. In Griffin v.…
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A Response to Professor Cornell on the Second Amendment
Historians and legal scholars are presently debating the historical scope of the right to bear arms. One of the most prominent participants in this debate, Professor Saul Cornell, has a recent post on the Originalism Blog criticizing my work. But his post does not respond to most of the objections that I have raised against his arguments,…
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New York After Bruen
Last Thursday, the Supreme Court held in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, that New York’s policy of limiting licenses to carry pistols to those who can show “proper cause” is unconstitutional under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. I will have more to say in the coming days about some of the…
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The Myth of the “Massachusetts Model”
The title of Saul Cornell’s recent blog post—The Myth of Non-enforcement of Gun Laws in Nineteenth Century America—leaves the impression that I will argue that nineteenth-century gun restrictions went unenforced. I will make no such argument. In some places, laws regulating the carrying of weapons were enforced strictly. In others, they were ignored. Some authorities…
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The Right to Bear Arms (Openly?) in the Supreme Court: Did the Bruen Petitioners Err by Seeking Only a New York “Concealed-Carry” License?
Since at least Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court has recognized that a litigant may not be able to secure judicial relief if he seeks the wrong remedy. A question about the proper remedy is brewing in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. Bruen involves plaintiffs who have unsuccessfully sought unrestricted…
Standing His Ground 