Home Quote of the Day Ruth Marcus is Horrified by the ‘Insane State of Second Amendment Law’...

Ruth Marcus is Horrified by the ‘Insane State of Second Amendment Law’ as a Result of Bruen

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Clarence Thomas
Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
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When the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment protects individuals’ right to gun ownership, it emphasized the ability “of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” When it expanded that decision last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the court noted that “ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense.”

Zackey Rahimi was, one presumes, not the kind of upstanding citizen the justices had in mind.

Over a six-week stretch from December 2020 to January 2021, Rahimi took part in five shootings around Arlington, Tex. He fired an AR-15 into the home of a man to whom he had sold Percocet. The next day, after a car accident, he pulled out a handgun, shot at the other driver and sped off — only to return, fire a different gun and flee again. Rahimi shot at a police car. When a friend’s credit card was declined at a fast-food restaurant, he fired several rounds into the air.

Or, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit put it in vacating Rahimi’s conviction for illegal gun possession, “Rahimi, while hardly a model citizen, is nonetheless part of the political community entitled to the Second Amendment’s guarantees, all other things equal.”

This is the insane state of Second Amendment law in the chaotic aftermath of Bruen. The problem isn’t that decision’s precise outcome, striking down New York state’s gun licensing law because it required a showing of “special need for self-protection” to obtain a concealed carry permit.

The problem is that in doing so, the six-justice conservative majority imposed a history-based test — a straitjacket, really — for assessing the constitutionality of gun laws. No longer can judges decide whether restrictions are a reasonable means to protect public safety.

Instead, they have to hunt down obscure, colonial-era statutes to determine if there are counterparts to modern rules. So it’s little surprise that conservative judges in the lower courts are now busy declaring all sorts of perfectly sensible gun laws unconstitutional. …

All of which serves to underscore the real difficulty with the Supreme Court’s history fetish: As Bruen itself demonstrated, the matter of what historical examples to accept and what to reject is open to manipulation by judges predisposed to strike down gun laws.

And it poses a dilemma for the conservative justices, who are about to find this issue back in their laps. Are they going to instruct lower courts they have gone too far, or are they going to let it rip, while bullets fly and judges scour statutes from the age of muskets?

— Ruth Marcus in Ye Olde Supreme Court? Your Originalism Is Making America Unsafe.

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76 COMMENTS

  1. Do a google search on her name. She a raving liberal, lunatic with a serious infection of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Plus she writes for the Washington (com) post. Not surprised by this “article”.

    • “She a raving liberal, lunatic with a serious infection of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

      In other words shes a ‘Miner49er’.

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      • OK she’s a leftist yada, yada, yada. While that defines her it leaves the Gun Control she aspouses to not defined by its History of Rot…Gun Owner Failure to define her Gun Control is an opportunity wasted and the ongoing Much, Much Bigger Problem…A problem sure to put a pleasing sht grin on any Gun Control zealot’s face.

        • She’s a older “Karen” who “writes” for The Washington Post.
          Bruen scares her as does the overturning of Roe.
          Anti gun and pro late abortion. That’s about all you need to know.
          It’s like HuffPost, find one “writer” that says a good thing about guns.
          You won’t but I get the “know thy enemy” thing.

    • What isn’t said in the article is that all of the conduct related in the article is a crime in most states with whose criminal code I am familiar. I am sure all of those listed actions by the named individual also violate Texas criminal code. What happened is that the DA decided to throw enough poop against the wall so that some of it might stick. He probably added the felon in possession charge to enhance the sentence. Something I agree with but is so seldom enforced in the peepuls republik of kallyfornikadia that it might as well not be on the books. If the felon in question were sentenced to consecutive sentences instead of concurrent as is the popular habit, the prosecutor would have reached the same end AND if a 30 year sentence actually meant 30 years instead of 8 1/2, we might not have the crime problem we have. Good behavior reductions should be awarded for above and beyond good behavior. Donating blood every month one is incarcerated might be one way, assuming the blood is not tainted with some contagious disease like AIDS. Donating organs might be another way to earn good time, assuming no infractions during on’e incarceration. Too many times in court I saw a felon continued on probation after committing another felony. WTF??? I suspect some of those felons were confidential informants but in my not so humble opinion, CIs who commit additional felonies should not have a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card. Being incarcerated prevents recidivism while incarcerated. That is a good thing and reduces crime. The longer a felon is incarcerated, the longer John Q. Public is free from the felon’s criminal depredations. No, no, no, don’t give me that rehabilitation booshwa. Like alcoholism, nothing you do to a criminal will “rehabilitate” him until he, himself, decides to go straight.

      • I wondered when SOMEONE would bring this aspect of the justice systems lack of keeping John Q Public safe. Also, no gyms, TV, computers or any other perks for inmates. They are there to be PUNISHED not to enjoy the better things in life. They LOST their right to all that when they committed and were sentenced for the crime. Why NOT commit a crime,,,,,,you get a free vacation for a while.

  2. Another leftist with more stupid ideas. I cannot believe how many dumb people are out there. you just cannot explain to people like this they do not understand. they are just sickening weak sheeps.

    • Not so much dumb as products of the Liberal Progressive Democrat Educational Indoctrination System. Formally known as public education.

      • yes I agree. I come from a family of anti College people, all of us have owned our own businesses and made good livings from them, hard work and long hours. we’ve been saying for 40 or 50 years now that College doesn’t teach people anything except how to be leftist. my granddaughter went to college and she was constantly fighting with the professors with their far left wacko ideas. we need to get colleges of common sense for these people.

  3. What makes America ‘unsafe’ is this attitude my Democrats that allows for purposely keeping criminals free to threaten everyone else’s life.

    • I assume that the “gentleman” that is being referred to should have been sent to jail and had all rights to own guns revoked. That he was out running around shooting at folks is not the fault of the U.S.S.C. The leftist (Marxist) want criminals to run free and patriots to be locked up in jail!

  4. “The problem is that in doing so, the six-justice conservative majority imposed a history-based test — a straitjacket, really — for assessing the constitutionality of gun laws. No longer can judges decide whether restrictions are a reasonable means to protect public safety.”

    Well, they didn’t leave the SCotUS a choice. ‘Heller’ meant what it said, that the people have a right to self-defense outside the home, along with inside the home.

    They insisted the 2A was a second-hand right, when in fact it carries the same weight as the other rights.

    It’s finally starting.

    The fascist Leftist Scum ™ are beginning to awake to the reality of the ‘Bruen’ decision, and what it means for their fascist desire to ban any and all guns. If you thought the Left was un-hinged before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

    And holy crap, it’s gonna be funny as hell to watch it play out… 🙂

    • So wait – a law’s constitutionality now depends on the Constitution rather than the judge’s stupid fucking feelings about its “reasonableness”? The audacity!

    • As I joked with 40 cal earlier, they scream and cry out about blood in the streets re expanding gun right but here in NY do their damnedest to ensure that some streets are the only places we can legally carry outside the home………. logic is funny sometimes.

    • No longer can judges decide whether restrictions are a reasonable means to protect public safety.”

      that never was a part of their job description.
      They are to adjudicate matters on the basis of FACTS and LAW. “public safety” is not in their bailiwick. Typical librul tripe she spews.
      Someone sit her down and remind her that “the security of a free state” (that means people working together as communities, civil society) is the DUTY of the free members of that state. And since their security is THEIR responsibility, the Constitution asserts that the right to arms SHALL be part and parcel of each citizen’s set of rights…. and responsibilities.

      That means government cannot meddle with that right on any basis.

      • She’s one of those people who want the benefits of modern society but without the contributions and responsibilities.

        She needs the guiding hand of the great leader and the eternal party to bring happiness to all.

      • Tionico, Most leftists don’t understand that with rights come responsibilities.
        Ever hear when 1 of them is offended by anything? Usually 1 of the first thing they spout off is how they know their rights. My usual response is, You know your rights but what are your responsibilities? Have yet to have one of those folks do anything but puff or open and close their mouths like a fish out of water.

  5. It’s not the Bruen decision that is making these sort of violent episodes seem more common, it is the Soros backed DA’s and blue state legislatures emptying prisons and releasing arrestees w/o cash bail

    • If her claims about the behavior of this man are correct, then why not put him in jail for those crimes? Lefties seem to think people like this guy would suddenly turn into model citizens if only those bad old guns didn’t make him act like this. Clearly in order to be a true progressive you just have to be irrational and a large slice of stupid seems to help move them further to the left.

  6. The times a comin when we gonna have to fight. It doesn’t matter if we are safer or not. We are in the middle of a coup attempt. The stupid bastards think that they will be in charge afterwards, because they were down with the cause. As soon as the commies are in charge they will kill them like everywhere else they take over. Ask Trotsky about Stalin. Ask homosexuals how life is in Russia and China.

    • Those who ignore history or believe they know better are doomed to be the victims when it repeats itself. If anyone in that childish group called Antifa thinks they’ll survive the second purging after the true communist dictator takes over with full military and congressional support, it just proves how dumb they really are. I think the term is “useful idiots.”

  7. “No longer can judges decide whether restrictions are a reasonable means to protect public safety.”

    That right there, that word ‘reasonable’. What we had before was judges saying ‘the states case and concern is ‘reasonable’ therefore yes the state may infringe the second amendment'” Seriously, it was called ‘interest balancing’ and it simply did not work for preserving the peoples rights and imposed a state cruel tyrannical nature upon decent law abiding people. That ‘interest balancing’ had deviated so far from the inherent right that it became an almost ‘sure thing’ for a state to go into court and win ‘control’ over what the constitution and the right means to shape it into their image and that is not what the constitution is for nor how it was intended to be used and the founders and framers of the constitution were very clear on that.

    Bruen was needed to refocus the courts back on the constitutional rights which are for the people instead of what a usurping ‘tyrannical’ nature state wanted. But it was also needed to reassert not only the second amendment right as the first order right its was intended to be (all of the first 10 are first order rights) instead of the ‘second class right’ the states could control, but also to emphasize to the government, once again as had to be done once before that resulted in the Bill of Rights, these are the peoples rights and not the governments domain to do with as the government chooses.

    • What Ruth Marcus should be horrified at is that the liberals/democrats ‘government’ had actually undermined and usurped the constitution, basically imposed the foundation of a tyranny, and the second amendment was just their first stop. The next two would have been the 4th and 1st, then the 14th after that. Each right remolded by ‘reasonable’ (AKA ‘interest balancing’) in the courts to what the government wanted. Biden even tried a swing at the 4th in a SCOTUS case called Caniglia v. Strom. SCOTUS started putting a stop to it in Caniglia and Bruen.

  8. It’s hard to take articles like this seriously. Ok, it’s impossible.

    No case is made that the guy shouldn’t have had a gun before he started shooting places up. no mention is made of him being released. Only that he was not convicted on the possession charge.

    Either he got away with everything because of Bruen, and/or the writer is so inept that he/she/it couldn’t be bothered to explain what actually happened, which could have been convictions on other counts, or he had previous convictions that should not result in having rights removed. Really quite unclear from the rabid foam what the author is upset about in that specific case.

    If I have to go do research to understand what your article is about, it’s not a good article. (Not TTAG)

  9. Ttag, why aren’t you as bad as the democrats? You moderate the same shit. Howosexual, lesbiannas, your cowardice is not lost on me.

  10. “it’s little surprise that conservative judges in the lower courts are now busy declaring all sorts of perfectly sensible gun laws unconstitutional. …”

    Because they never were perfectly sensible nor Constitutional you jackass.

  11. Ttag is rife with cowardice. We are figuring out what words trigger moderation. What side are you on? Do the corksuckers and cat lickers make up the demographic you’re trying to reach?

    • Easy there, Redneck. We’ve all been hit by the WordPress filters. None of us can figure out what they are, so just learn to work around them. You can generally bypass moderation by becoming creative with certain buzzwords you know may trigger the filters.

      Use spaces and dashes between letters.

    • The filters are on red alert today. My very first comment of the day (on another TTAG article from this morning) was promptly modded.

  12. Zero mention as to why Rahimi was not locked up after the first incident. Yet, somehow that’s not the problem.

  13. I have a very hard time with understanding liberals. What does gun ownership or possession have to do with how it is used?

    • See, if it twern’t for the guns all these psychopathic lunatics running around assaulting, raping, car-jacking, dealing drugs, thieving and generally living life like it’s a GTA video game wouldn’t be.

      Magic.

  14. State assemblies across the land are pushing unconstitutional laws as we speak. It’ll be glorious to see each and every one of these laws rolled back and hear the teeth-gnashing and wailing of the the gun-grabbing harpies and wimps.

    • It will be far better when those responsible for floating these foul evil and clearly UNconstitutional “laws” into the legislatures, and VOTING for them, will face criminal charges for their egregious violation of their oaths of office.

      Maybe when half a dozen of the more radical and offensive of these perverts face heavy fines, jail time, and perhaps loss of theor own liberty some of the wannabe tyrants will make informed decisions to either step down from their positions if (misplaced) trust or straighten up and fly right.

  15. Times a comin when we gonna have to conflict. We are in the middle of a coup. The elite think they will be in charge when it’s all over. It never works out that way, ask Trotsky about Stalin, Che Guerra about Castro. They kill anyone who might threaten their control. Ask corksuckers and cat lickers what happens to them in collective nations

  16. I have a bunch of guns in the house and not once have any of them walked off and shot anyone or anything. Leftists say guns are the problem but mine just sit here, they don’t even twiddle their triggers. I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong.

  17. First, here’s the ruling mentioned in the article:

    https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-11001-CR1.pdf

    Second, this author (Marcus) is SO dishonest. So typical of gun-haters.

    This case was about the Constitutionality of the domestic violence protection order. Nobody denies the defendant did bad things, and virtually nobody would deny that he should have been, and should now be, in JAIL.

    The simple fact is that everything he DID with the guns he possessed was already unlawful. Yet Marcus lies by painting a picture that this violent criminal (and more importantly, others like him in the future) would have some how been deterred if mere possession were against the law.

    Hey Marcus: Guess what: At the time he committed those crimes, it WAS against the law!! Only post-Bruen is that law now coming into question. What further PROOF do we need to completely DEBUNK your point?

  18. I wonder if Ruth Marcus would be fine using the same perfectly sensible rules applied to her right to a trial by jury….. I mean the Government can obviously in her mind decide who is entitled to at least one right…. so they should be more than capable just finding her guilty and locking her away for the rest of her life based on an assessment of her character and if she has just cause to deserve her day in court….

    I’m sick of people trying to give away other peoples rights and thinking they have the moral high ground when in fact they little better than the morons who used to march around in bed sheets and burn crosses on peoples lawns.

    • Or vote? Perhaps they could repeal the 19th? Since that has led to overall ‘insanity’ and wave of legislation driven by feelz.

  19. What we have here is classic cognitive dissonance by someone in the left wing bubble.

    In her mind, it’s just unthinkable that “reasonable” governmental efforts to disarm people are anything but acceptable (just like they could never wrap their heads around the fact that PTD could possibly have defeated Hillary). That the predictions of “rivers of blood” would follow “shall issue” CCL’s, open carry laws, Constitutional Carry, etc., have never come true doesn’t register — her feelz are all that matters to her, and the actual evidence and the law be damned.

    I had such a conversation a few years ago with a similar leftist acquaintance, who was adamant that was “obvious” that more guns = more crime. When I confronted him with the actual, official crime stats (which have shown a decline in violent crime rates over the past three decades, corresponding with liberalization of gun laws, and especially the explosion in gun ownership post Sandy Hook), he just refused to accept the possibility that his gut reactions might not be supported by any actual evidence, and indeed might be refuted by the data. (Making matters worse, this guy is a PhD materials scientist who is supposed to know better than to disregard confounding data in favor of an unsupported hypothesis.)

    • Shouldn’t be surprising anymore. Look at all the lunacy over the past three years based upon ScIeNcE…

      Truth is that there is very little real science anymore, just so-called experts parroting what has been fed to them. Easier to repeat than to think.

    • “Cope and seethe.”

      I’m kinda partial to suggesting that they work on their apparently (obviously) lacking coping skills… 🙂

  20. There’s nothing in the Bruen decision that makes it unconstitutional to convict Rahimi for the five shootings and sentence him to prison. Since each shooting was a separate crime, his sentences could be consecutive.

  21. Total leftist drivel…..

    Leftists are the bigoted, thuggish, lying, treasonous, self-aggrandizing, racist, pedophilic thieves of our lives, our liberties, our freedoms, our vote and our country.

  22. Her mind os so warped she seems to believe that the Bruen decision grants this nutjob the “right” to do all the shooting he did. No.All Bruen said was to deny him the right to possess those guns at the time he got them was wrong. What e DID with them once he had them is clearly illegal and he SHOULD face consequences for THOSE actions. And it wold seem that part of that set of consequences would be to be denied his right to arms based on his behaviour which proves him to be too dangerous to be allowed to freely roam about in public, armed or disarmed, without a qualified custodian.

    If this nitwit Ruth creature cannot generate a more coherent article she should not be surprised to find her mealticket shrinking…….

  23. Why don’t they just prosecute people for what they do or keep him in jail for crimes he committed? Oh yeah, I forgot “Racism” and “equity” and “criminal justice reform.”

  24. “the insane state of second amendment law as a result of bruen”
    will result in:
    republican governed areas
    having less gun crime
    and democrat ones
    having more
    with absolute certainty

  25. What other constitutional rights would you like to give up by means of a protective order?

    We already have an accepted way to keep guns out of the hands of Rahimi and other violent criminals like him: put him in prison. In fact, it’s a good way to hold him to the the terms of his protective order as well.

  26. There is no such thing as “modern rules”. The rules are oppresive, of they are not. The laws are constitutional, or they are not. “Modern” is a crock of sheite! There were oppressive SOBs way back in Babylon, putting people to death for having the nerve to bear arms within sight of royalty. Did we think for a moment that the Jews were permitted to carry weapons during their stay in Babylon? If not – then why, oh why, oh WHY not?

    Oppression. Plain and simple.

  27. What’s not addressed is the prohibition against Rahimi possessing firearms didn’t derive from convictions for the criminal behavior Marcus describes. Instead, it was from a civil restraining order. The question was whether those orders are Constitutional. The Fifth Circuit says no, according to the Bruen standard. The more fundamental question is, I’d this guy was on such a crime spree, why was he walking free?

    Here’s a thought: maybe if he spent time in jail starting with the incident where he fired into a man’s home, the other incidents never happen.

  28. If the totalitarians just let law abiding people have their rights without repression we would not have this problem now, if to have my rights (not desires) requires letting everyone having their rights I will gladly pay that price.

  29. Rahimi removed himself from “law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home” as soon as he shot an AR15 into someone’s home. he should have been arrested. Instead, he committed more gun crimes. Law enforcement didn’t do their job. Libtards are doing everything they can to disarm citizens by not enforcing laws on the books or arresting/charging people who break the law. Lib DAs releasing criminals without bail let them go out and commit more crimes. The lib’s plan is to only allow criminals possess firearms. Look at our southern border with millions of border crashers, and how many thousands more are undetected, including drug cartel members, human traffickers and terrorists. What will stop them when the citizens are unarmed? Not a damned thing!. Litards utopia..

  30. is there a colonial historical statue that prevented felons that had completed their sentences from having guns?

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