Why SCOTUS Has Been More Disappointing Than Expected

The Supreme Court should be a playground for gun rights advocates at the moment. With a strong majority of justices supporting the right to keep and bear arms, we shouldn’t have a problem clearing house of all the unconstitutional gun control laws, even with Rahimi as part of the precedents that the Court will need to consider.

The problem is that far too few gun control challenges are making it before the Court. While there are some set for later this year, there are other massive cases that have passed on in the recent past.

Most egregiously was the refusal of the Court to hear the last assault weapon ban case. There are hints they’ll take it up in the future, but why not hear it now?

Over at Ammoland, writer Roger Katz places the blame primarily on one particular justice.

Let us dispense with the pleasantries.

The United States Supreme Court’s handling of Second Amendment cases is not “confusing,” not “complicated,” and not the product of innocent happenstance. It is, rather, the predictable output of discretionary power being used to avoid decisive confrontation with state defiance of the Court’s own landmark rulings.

And in that avoidance, the Second Amendment is being bled—slowly, methodically, and with a degree of institutional self-protection that should alarm every citizen who understands what the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms is, and what it is for.

This companion article is necessarily short. The full argument is set forth in our original Arbalest Quarrel article, (Chief Justice Roberts Is Strangling The Life Out Of The Second Amendment) which we urge you to read in full. But the essentials are plain enough, and they must be stated plainly.

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Roberts Is Not “One Of Nine” In Practice

Many people speak as if the Chief Justice is merely a vote.

That is naïve.

The Chief Justice sets tone. The Chief Justice influences what is encouraged, what is discouraged, what is slowed, what is contained, and what is treated as “too hot” for the Court to touch.

• Landmark rulings exist.
• States defy them.
• The Court refuses to take the best cases to stop the defiance.
• The Right is left to be strangled by delay, litigation costs, and sabotage by lower courts.

One does not need mind-reading to infer intention when behavior repeats itself with consistency.

In other words, the problem is that Roberts is wishy-washy on the Second Amendment. While he voted with the majority in Bruen, he also voted with the majority in Rahimi, to say nothing of having a long history of opposing the Court taking on Second Amendment cases.

The only reason they have in recent years is because President Donald Trump named three justices in his first term, which tipped the balance of power significantly. They’ve been able to tilt things more in favor of the Court taking on gun cases, but they haven’t been some of the big ones that are desperately needed.

The Supreme Court wasn’t originally designed specifically to take on constitutional questions, but it adapted to that pretty quickly in practice. It’s the mechanism for keeping both federal and state power in check. That’s especially important when it comes to our constitutionally protected rights, such as the right to keep and bear arms.

Roberts, though, has a long history of keeping the Court from taking on gun rights cases, and his influence is still strong enough to keep the Court from taking on more than the bare minimum.

There are constitutional questions that need to be answered, and we pretty much know how this Court will answer them, but if they don’t get that chance, it doesn’t matter in the least. If Roberts is using his power and authority to keep the status quo on guns more or less intact, then we’ve got a massive issue, too.

It’s time for the rest of the justices to do what they can to make sure Roberts has little choice in the matter. We need our rights back, and the Supreme Court is pretty much the only way that’s going to happen.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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