The Supreme Court is Poised to Blow A Giant Hole in Gun Control. Here’s How the Liberal Justices Can Intervene.
Harvard Law Review by Aaron Tang 10/21/2019
Lost in the shuffle of a busy October at the Supreme Court—one filled with high profile developments concerning the right to abortion and the treatment of LGBT workers—was a single, ominous sentence buried away on page eleven of the Court’s first orders list of the Term: “The Respondents’ Suggestion of Mootness is denied.†Despite its opacity, this single sentence is the clearest signal yet of the impending doom for critical gun control laws currently in force in eight states and Washington, D.C.
To back up a bit, the case in question is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York. It involves a Second Amendment challenge brought by gun rights activists against specific restrictions that New York City—the respondent in the case—placed on their ability to travel with their firearms.
The Court granted certiorari in January, which was itself a bad sign for gun control proponents—the City’s restrictions were upheld in the lower courts and no other federal court has reached a conflicting conclusion, leaving the Court little reason to take the case other than to reverse the decision below. But the Court tipped its hand still further when it denied the City’s request to dismiss the case as moot in light of intervening city and state laws, both of which granted the challengers the exact relief they requested in their complaint. If any of the conservative Justices were at all interested in avoiding this highly charged dispute, by far the easiest course would have been to accept the City’s Suggestion of Mootness, given that the challengers had already gotten all that they had asked for. Their refusal to do so is a strong signal that the conservative majority is poised to issue a blockbuster ruling that will expand the right to carry guns outside the home. Such a ruling would add insult to injury for countless communities that have been ravaged by gun violence, a number that is growing rapidly due to the striking increase in mass shootings across the nation.
But all is not lost. The liberal Justices in the minority have a last-ditch strategy that would sacrifice the specific gun restriction at issue in this case, yet save a number of far more critical gun control measures around the county.
More:
https://blog.harvardlawreview.org/the-supreme-court-is-poised-to-blow-a-giant-hole-in-gun-control-heres-how-the-liberal-justices-can-intervene/
