Heller is a mess,
McDonald is far worse, and
Bruen is basically incomprehensible and unworkable. I’m happy to elaborate on any of those statements if needed.
As to your open carry question: if you mean that we as a society need to respect SCOTUS’s decisions, then sure.
But not even
Heller or
McDonald was cool with *everyone* open carrying, with Scalia saying the 2A was
“not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
He also says that
“The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
So I wouldn’t say that I am personally “cool” with it. The SCOTUS has been dead ass wrong about every 2A case since 2008, and the more Americans realize that, the more we can work towards getting out of this mess.
I didn’t say it was the same, just that it didn’t decline significantly. Parents still taught their kids to read, even if all they had was a Bible.
You have to remember that prior to
McDonald in 2010, the 2A only restrained the federal government, not the states. The reason no one objected to all these 2A state laws I’ve mentioned isn’t because they were illiterate, it’s because they didn’t think those laws were unconstitutional. Because they weren’t.
I didn’t say gunpowder = firearm.
I said the gunpowder storage laws and this AL gun storage law are both examples of safe storage laws which have a long history of being constitutional. There are also colonial laws against having a loaded weapon in any building or dwelling that I could point to, if we wanted to go that route. But yes, we do disagree on much
Making it nearly impossible for states to regulate firearms isn’t progress. We have far more dangerous firearms commercially available than ever before, so I don’t agree with the idea that we needed safety laws in the past but not now. Gun violence in our communities is far more of a concern now than it ever has been.
I don’t know the exact context of that NY judge’s remark, but it’s interesting: had he made that comment anytime between 1792-2010, he’d be 100% correct. In fact, what he said is just a more blunt version of what SCOTUS said in the very first 2A case we ever had,
US v Cruickshank.
But I agree that he shouldn’t say that, or decide the case based on that idea, in light of the
McDonald decision.