Since Bruen, lower court judges applying its test have been, to use a legal term of art, all over the place, a fact repeatedly highlighted during oral arguments by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who sought some, any, guidance on how the court should understand its own ruling. Again, lower courts are equally confused. One court, for example, decided that Florida’s ban on the sale of guns to 18-to-20-year-olds passed constitutional muster; another concluded that a federal law disarming people convicted of certain crimes perhaps did not.
A few judges have publicly aired their frustrations with the sudden analytical primacy of law-office history. “We are not experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791,” wrote one in 2022. “Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication.” Another castigated the court for creating a game of “historical Where’s Waldo” that entails “mountains of work for district courts that must now deal with Bruen-related arguments in nearly every criminal case in which a firearm is found.”
Just goes to show how shitty, stupid, and partisan this Trump Supreme Court is.
Agreed. A big problem with the gun control debate is that on one hand we have lunatics able to massacre hundreds of children and on the other hand the right to bear arms exists so that people can defend their other rights when the government decides to be tyranical. I’ve heard the arguements that people can’t defend themselves from the modern military, but Vietnam’s handling of the US would be the counter arguement. The founding fathers and Karl Marx realized the importance of the people’s ability to defend againest tyranny. So all that being said, how do we keep the citizens armed while not letting crazies kill our children. To that I have no answer, but I hope that some kind of comprise can be reached.