Gun Control Debate

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Alatar]

I hope this doesn't turn into a witch hunt to blame first responders instead of looking at the actual causes... oh who am I kidding...

[RoseMorninStar]

I saw this the other day and it pretty much sums the ridiculousness up:

Lettuce do something.jpg (64.58 KiB) Viewed 147 times

[Eldy]

I hope this doesn't turn into a witch hunt to blame first responders instead of looking at the actual causes... oh who am I kidding...

I would certainly like there to be meaningful gun reform (though I largely gave up hope of ever seeing it after Sandy Hook failed to make a difference), but I'd also like to see the police held to a standard commensurate to the amount of military hardware and cultural fêting that get heaped upon them. But American police have no duty to protect the public, so I don't expect to get what I want in this regard, either, unless one or a few individuals are hung out to dry as scapegoats.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes, I don't think it needs to be an either/or.

[N.E. Brigand]

As expected, the Supreme Court today struck down a century-old New York law that required anyone wishing to get a concealed carry permit for handguns to "demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community."

President Biden says that today's ruling "contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all." I agree. The Supreme Court is violating the Constitution yet again, and they'll never face consequences for doing so.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think it is horrible decision, but I think I am even more offended by the idea that Supreme Court justices should face "consequences" for having a different opinion on how to interpret the constitution. That is a truly dangerous idea, in my opinion.

[Eldy]

I too would be very careful with rhetoric about "consequences," not that I think N.E. Brigand meant anything terrible by this, but just because it's so easily taken a bad way. That said, I think (though, admittedly, I have not spent much time refining this thought) that the Supreme Court's power of constitutional review hits differently in the current environment. Granted, people have always been understandably upset when decisions go against them, but I don't think it's solely down to a matter of perception. Part of that is the Roberts Court's very loose attitude towards precedent, but also, I think, because Congress is presently so ill-equipped to play its theoretical balancing role. The idea of a new constitutional amendment feels far-fetched, to put it lightly—though that's as much due to state legislatures—but so is the idea of Congress successfully passing a bill that could mitigate the consequences of a new landmark decision, like Employment Division v. Smith and the RFRA. Even if such a law could somehow be passed when the two chambers are controlled by different parties, it would most likely be promptly gutted by the Court.

[N.E. Brigand]

I think it is horrible decision, but I think I am even more offended by the idea that Supreme Court justices should face "consequences" for having a different opinion on how to interpret the constitution. That is a truly dangerous idea, in my opinion.

There's nothing special about the judicial branch as opposed to the legislative branch or the executive branch. They're all politicians, and when they go too far, they should be kicked out of office. That's what I meant by consequences. Maybe this decision isn't sufficiently bad to justify removal, but there certainly have been some that demanded such a serious response. The U.S. would have been a better and more just nation if the seven Supreme Court justices who ruled for the majority in Plessy v. Fergusson in 1896 had promptly been impeached for violating the Constitution and replaced with Justices who would undo the pure evil of segregation.

[Frelga]

Taken as a whole, the recent SCOTUS decisions are paving a way for a state in which citizens have no recourse against an oppressive government and the armed thugs who support it.

And the party that still has some of power for the next few months lives in a delusional fantasy where liberty and democracy are some sort of self-generating magic, instead of a hard won and fragile state.

[N.E. Brigand]

It's a small step, but it's not nothing: