Supreme Court to Decide First-Ever Gun-Carry Case | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court to Decide First-Ever Gun-Carry Case

thereload.com

42 pointsexolymph74 comments

This should be interesting. On one hand gun control vehemence continues to mount, and at the same time, and very under the radar of most media outlets, gun communities and interest have exploded in the last few years, largely through veteran led lifestyle social media channels.

There are more Americans passionate about firearms and who see them as central to their identity than ever before. And they are more socially connected.

When it's not just a revolver in a bedside table, but the AR-15, the custom glock, the pants, the overlanding vehicle, and the body armor that you and your camping buddies turned obstacle course team all have, we're talking about a decentralized militia that is very social, very consumer friendly, and very focused on their natural rights.

It's not rednecks with shotguns anymore, it's guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup.

FWIW I totally agree. Even my dad wants an AR-15 and he only ever had a gun when we were younger because he had a crazy guy stalking him. So many people have become recent gun owners and ammo hoarders that ammo is really, really hard to get right now. Can’t find target load for anything in my area.

More on topic: Montana just decided that you don’t need a permit for concealed carry.

> Montana just decided that you don’t need a permit for concealed carry.

FWIW, Montana's recent change means that there are now 20 states that allow concealed carry with no permit (though a couple of them limit it to residents only).

A week ago, the Texas House voted to allow handguns to be carried without a permit:

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/15/texas-constitutional...

The Texas Senate is trying to see if there are enough votes to pass it:

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/23/texas-constitutional...

What’s the deal with ammo manufacturers not being able to keep with demand? I’ve been hearing this for a long time. Or it was at least the case during the Obama admin.

Ammunition manufacturing tends to be very hard to scale: it takes large amounts of capital to invest in production and long periods of time to tune that production into a consistent product. The end result is that ammo production capacity is, for practical generalizations, completely fixed. Nobody produces more when prices are high, and only in rare scenarios would they stop production when prices are low.

The end result is usually strong swings of price for moderate changes in demand. And we're currently seeing demand levels that have never been seen before.

And couple that with riots last year, plus covid shutdowns wreaking havoc on the production lines. They're way way way backed up right now.

That's interesting, I know multiple people who reload so it can't be too hard.

It’s not difficult to start, but it requires intense attention to detail to do well (and safely). For instance - I usually a single-stage press instead of one of the fancier turret presses I have, because I like to weigh every ten rounds that come off to ensure consistency. Likewise, I spend the time necessary to choose a powder that fills more than 50% of the case volume so a double charge will overflow and be obvious. That’s even before I start load development, which is often specific to a single firearm, bullet, and even primer sometimes.

Speaking of primers... there are none out there for sale, and there haven’t been since very early 2020. Reloading equipment is easy to find, supplies not so much.

> Ammunition manufacturing tends to be very hard to scale: it takes large amounts of capital to invest in production

Also: how many people want to deal with lead (Pb) and all the toxicity that it entails?

If only one component of a cartridge/round (bullet, shell, propellent, primer) isn't available then you can't finish making it.

It was never just rednecks with shotguns. “Redneck” is a political slander as bad as “thug”. Whenever someone says it your alarm bells should go off that someone is trying to emotionally manipulate your political beliefs. “You’re not a science-denying, gun-toting, bible-thumping redneck are you?”

> “Redneck” is a political slander as bad as “thug”.

I enjoy the country lifestyle. And frankly, living somewhere peaceful and quiet with ample acreage and privacy, and little to no air, light or noise pollution is a lifestyle that is in increasingly short supply.

I take pride in rocking up to a small town with bits of hay on my dirtied clothes. I’d only live in a city if I absolutely had to.

I’ll happily accept the “redneck” badge. It’s up there with “geek” for me.

Same. Tho, i'm a mexican so its more "brown neck", but whateveer.

And lots of people would embrace the term “thug”. It’s great if you can embrace it and make it something positive. My point about “look twice when you hear it” still stands, most people that use redneck in political contexts don’t mean well.

> most people that use redneck in political contexts don’t mean well

I’d say that most people who use it to describe a group to which they themselves do not belong fall into that category.

Meh, we’ve seen how organized and capable these folks are just a few months ago. They don’t inspire much fear in me, nor should they.

If you are referring to storming of the US Capitol a few months ago, I don't think that was by guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup.

It turns out there is no corrupted underworld forming to overthrow the government.

> guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup

That description makes me think of Carnik Con, which is what I imagine if gun loving hipsters made a comedy show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwI9_Q07zxk

None of my gun toting friend would be caught dead wearing skinny jeans or watching soccer.

I know some skinny-jeans-wearing gun-toting women, as well as gun-toting guys who not only watch soccer but play it as well.

> There are more Americans passionate about firearms and who see them as central to their identity than ever before.

[citation needed]

Household gun ownership went from 45% in 1980 down to 32% in 2016:

* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/gun-ownership.html

Fewer people own guns nowadays generally, with only one-third only a single gun, about one-third owning 2-4, and one-third owning >5:

* https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-dem...

Seems that only a minority of American (households) own firearms, and the ones that do may simply make more noise than the (silent) majority that do not.

> It's not rednecks with shotguns anymore, it's guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup.

The highest concentration of gun ownership is in the South and especially in rural counties (Table 4):

* https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gu...

I won't argue the data, which I don't have a study to refute, but I wish we could know the change since 2016.

Not surprising that gun ownership has gone down as its a major pain in the ass to get a gun in some states. In my state it's virtually impossible in the major metropolitan areas to own a gun without being politically connected. Similarly in the burbs and towns YMMV may vary depending on the local police chief.

I would love to own a gun, multiple guns, but some states make it incredibly difficult.

> Household gun ownership went from 45% in 1980 down to 32% in 2016:

And yet sales of new guns are up massively. Can you explain this discrepancy?

Perhaps a better interpretation is that the number of households who will admit owning a gun to a stranger who calls them on the phone went from 45% to 32%.

Someone's buying all those guns, dude. It sure isn't collectors who are buying millions of cheap Hi-Points and Kel-Tecs.

> And yet sales of new guns are up massively. Can you explain this discrepancy?

I do so in my post:

> Fewer people own guns nowadays generally, with only one-third only a single gun, about one-third owning 2-4, and one-third owning >5:

> * https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-dem...

> Seems that only a minority of American (households) own firearms, and the ones that do may simply make more noise than the (silent) majority that do not.

Ownership is more concentrated:

> But America’s gun super-owners, have amassed huge collections. Just 3% of American adults own a collective 133m firearms – half of America’s total gun stock. These owners have collections that range from eight to 140 guns, the 2015 study found. Their average collection: 17 guns each.

* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/15/the-gun-numb...

> Some are collectors with elaborately curated selections of historical firearms, while others are ‘just accumulators’. They say it is surprisingly easy to get to 17

* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/20/gun-ownershi...

> Fewer people own guns nowadays generally, with only one-third only a single gun, about one-third owning 2-4, and one-third owning >5:

Yeah, sorry, serious collectors aren't going out and buying junky Hi-Points and Kel-Tecs. They just aren't.

Which strikes you as more likely:

1) a serious gun collector buys multiple $200 hunks-of-junk.

2) people lie when a stranger calls and asks them about a politically charged topic?

> while others are ‘just accumulators’. They say it is surprisingly easy to get to 17

* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/20/gun-ownershi...

> "Household gun ownership went from 45% in 1980 down to 32% in 2016"

Gallup seems to indicate that gun ownership in the United States rose back to 42% by 2020?

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx

Polling gun owners about their weapons is extremely difficult, especially in the current age when one you can be ostracized for your beliefs. Random polling won't give you accurate results as many respondents will, fearing some sort of political trap, deny they own firearms at all, or simply decline to answer.

As one of those vilified "gun extremists", I'm cautiously optimistic here. We'll see what happens when the decision comes out, but maybe we'll get nationwide constitutional carry out of this.

It's bizarre to me how many of the same people that say we need to massively rethink policing still think it's a good idea to put the right to defend yourself from people attempting to do you harm behind a piece of paper given out by the police. Or to say that someone should go to jail and lose the right to vote/own a gun for life because your barrel is 15.9" instead of 16". Or that you should have to wait a year and pay a tax to have slightly less hearing damage.

I sort of agree with you, except that your conflation of 'people who say we need to massively rethink policing' and gun control advocates seems off the mark. Advocates of institutional abolitionism tend to be well to the left of reform-minded liberals, and supportive of arms-bearing rights on principle.

I admit it's a somewhat broad brush - I should've said the _party_ that generally says we need to rethink policing and so on. It is hard to break away from the two-party system in the US.

>It's bizarre to me how many of the same people that say we need to massively rethink policing still think it's a good idea to put the right to defend yourself from people attempting to do you harm behind a piece of paper given out by the police.

... says someone who puts their right to keep and bear arms against the government behind that government's Constitution.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. I never stated that the right to keep and bear arms (or any right) is inherently given by the Constitution since that would be false. The Constitution does _protect_ and specifically enumerate some inherent human rights.

If the Second Amendment doesn't grant a legal right to keep and bear arms, why is it necessary?

If it does, and is, how is it any different than a gun license or permit in being a legal fiction whose legitimacy depends on a government whose motives can't be trusted?

He said that 2A doesn't give us the right. It recognizes a pre-existing natural right.

> The Constitution does _protect_ and specifically enumerate some inherent human rights.

This is a religious belief - that rights are inherent to human beings. It's debatable whether gun ownership is an inherent human right beyond how we define them.

So the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights is religious?

I don't understand why it's hypocritical to want police reform and want guns/carry to continue to require licenses, even if those licenses must come from the police. Also, it sounds like you're describing the consequences of regulations that people want, where those regulations fail for being too blunt, but are framing it as those people wanting those consequences, which would make these apparently-many people quite evil, and of course, the easiest thing is to cast those who disagree with you on policy as evil (and to cast yourself as vilified).

It's not but dividing people along connected issues makes PR (manipulation) easier and that's worth a lot of money.

> It's bizarre to me how many of the same people that say we need to massively rethink policing

Policing has many aspects, and some may be currently working while others may not. See "Newark cops, with reform, didn't fire a single shot in 2020":

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26924367

> […] it's a good idea to put the right to defend yourself from people attempting to do you harm behind a piece of paper given out by the police.

Waiting periods, background checks, and prohibitions associated with domestic violence reduce gun violence:

* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy.html

Waiting periods also help reduce suicide (as does safe storage laws).

The problem is gun advocacy, like many other issues in US politics, have been bundled into bipartisanism, and are now loaded, complex issues.

Most people around me who are pro-2A are staunchly pro-police, staunchly against movements like BLM, for authoritarian type figures, etc. Police are often very pro 2A.

I'm generally pro 2nd amendment. But I am strongly for police reform. Despite being a right, the 2nd amendment should never be a necessity. If it is, we've failed as a nation.

> Despite being a right, the 2nd amendment should never be a necessity

It's funny how many things this can be applied to, but a lot of people don't seem to get it, on both sides.

Mandated Constitutional carry is probably a pipe dream. If SCOTUS rules against New York (and that isn't guaranteed by any means) I would expect that they tackle the "good cause" requirements that many states have for permits, where "good cause" often means "are you a personal friend or have you donated a large sum to my political campaign." Some states like Hawaii have the "good cause" language in their permitting system but they don't consider any reason at all to be "good cause" and blanket deny all applications.

New York's carry laws in particular, and how they play out in practice, is ripe for corruption. In places near the city (i.e. applicable to the majority of the state's population), you basically have to know the police chief or the sheriff to get a carry permit; this should be unacceptable for a Constitutionally-protected right. If on no other basis than this, their laws should be revised.

This can probably be generalized to every may-issue jurisdiction.

Much of NYC is SO dense that it seems absurd that anyone, even police, should be able to fire a gun there. It's almost impossible to do safely in any context.

I understand that people feel compelled to protect constitutional rights, but it often seems to defy some situational realities of the modern world? Are we really expected to forever carry this rule from a time when there were fewer people in the entire country than a single borough in a modern city?

Consider the war on drugs- not just a complete failure, but actively harmful, especially to minority communities, while rich white users continue about their business largely unmolested. You can get anything you want your first time in a visit to any American city inside of an hour. Just stop by a restaurant kitchen. Banning firearms would be about as successful. So the argument is, why criminalize a huge number of people who aren't criminals just because some criminals and mentally ill people use guns? It would lead to another drug war situation.

So I guess if you swing it the other way, the popular rhetoric around drugs is that they'd be better off legal and heavily regulated.

Pro-drug proponents are all for this. Why are pro-gun proponents against more regulation, especially lobbyists?

Regulation is a broad term for this context. I'm sure pro-gun proponents would be more than happy if the government regulated for product safety and quality and are generally fine with age limits and restricting sales to licensed dealers.

Somewhat related to this case is the way in which the Santa Clara County Sheriff was using concealed carry permits as a way of soliciting campaign contributions from Silicon Valley executives.[1]

[1]https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-23/apple-ch...

We're almost in the era of minority rule in the United Stated. The only bright spot here is we're in the death throes of conservative exceptionalism. But still the undue influence that group has due to gerrymandering, systemic voter suppression and disproportionate state representation is depressing.

The Supreme Court is meant to be one of the safeguards here. To his credit, while the conservatives were 5-4 John Roberts actually tried to fight the appearance of partisanship by the Court because faith in the institution matters. But now? The Conservatives have long put off taking up Second Amendment cases not because they weren't important but because they might not go their way. Now with a solid 6-3 majority, they seem prepared to foist that world view down our collective throats.

If you want an analog of this, look at how the Redeemer court effectively dismantled post-Emancipation protections in the decades following [1].

There's so many problems with the Second Amendment zealots it's hard to know where to begin.

First, the "right". Well, it's not absolute. If it was, it wouldn't be denied to felons and there wouldn't be background checks or waiting periods. Nor would there be a restriction on what "arms" the citizens could "keep and bear". Why not fully automatic weapons? Surface to air missiles? Nuclear weapons? Nerve gas? Biological weapons?

As soon as you concede the right isn't absolute you're just debating what limits there should be.

There's also the Second Amendment specifically noting a "well-regulated Militia". That nuance has been conveniently forgotten about.

The US had 45 mass shootings in a month recently [2]. 45.

The disastrous War on Drugs created the drug cartels. What do those cartels fight with in their territories? Guns easily obtained in the US. That's how the drug trade works: drugs into the US, money and guns out.

What's amazing is the US has collectively thrown its hands up saying "there's nothing we can do" to a problem literally no one else has.

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/redemption...

[2]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/us/mass-shootings-45-one-mont...

> First, the "right". Well, it's not absolute. If it was, it wouldn't be denied to felons and there wouldn't be background checks or waiting periods.

You're using circular reasoning here. Just because the right is currently infringed doesn't mean the right doesn't exist. That's like saying that if some people's right to vote is infringed, there really isn't a right to vote.

> There's also the Second Amendment specifically noting a "well-regulated Militia".

"well regulated" meant "in good working order" at the time the BoR was written. The operative clause is "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", which is a pretty strong statement.

> The disastrous War on Drugs created the drug cartels.

What do you think a new "war on guns" will do?

> Guns easily obtained in the US. That's how the drug trade works: drugs into the US, money and guns out.

Sometimes the US Government gives guns to the cartels which are ostensibly illegal for US civilians to own! [1]

> a problem literally no one else has.

The US isn't even close to the most violent country per capita. Other countries with less recognition of the right to keep and bear arms just resort to other forms of violence [2]. The "assault weapons" people are very concerned about are used in less than 300 homicides per year. More people are killed with hands and fists than all rifles (a subset of which are deemed "assault weapons") [3].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

[3]: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

> "well regulated" meant "in good working order" at the time the BoR was written.

The late Chief Justice Burger (appointed by Nixon) disagreed:

> That says a well regulated militia being necessary for the defense of the state, people's rights to bear arms. This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word "fraud," on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. Now just look at those words. There are only three lines to that amendment. A well regulated militia -- if the militia, which was going to be the state army, was going to be well regulated, why shouldn't 16 and 17 and 18 or any other age persons be regulated in the use of arms the way an automobile is regulated? It's got to be registered, that you can't just deal with it at will. Someone asked me recently if I was for or against a bill that was pending in Congress calling for five days' waiting period. And I said, yes, I'm very much against it, it should be thirty days' waiting period so they find out why this person needs a handgun or a machine gun.

* MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, Dec. 16, 1991, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eya_k4P-iEo

See also various comments by the late Associate Justice Stevens (Ford).

The individual right to bear arms is a recent invention, with no record of the idea appearing in the legal record until a 1960 article in the William and Mary Law Review:

* https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol2/iss2/6/

And in that article the author himself states:

> The majority of the jurisdictions have concluded that both the United States Constitution and the various state constitutions, having a similar provision relating to the right to bear arms, refer to the militia as a whole composed and regulated by the state as it desires. The individual does not have the right to own or bear individual arms, such being a privilege not a right.

A 2000 review of the literature:

* PDF: http://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

> Just because the right is currently infringed doesn't mean the right doesn't exist

So obviously inmates should also be allowed guns too right? Where's the NRA's "AR-15s for Inmates" campaign? Hyperbolic? Sure. But it exposes the fallacy that the right (or any right for that matter) is absolute. Just like the First Amendment doesn't mean shouting "I have a bomb" in a crowded theater is protected speech the government can't criminalize.

> The operative clause is ...

Oh, so the first part is just irrelevant flavor text? Let me put this in context [1]:

> Under the Articles of Confederation, from 1777 on, states were required to maintain their own “well regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered” with “a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.” The states would appoint all officers under the rank of colonel. The confederation Congress was permitted to “requisition” these militias for the “common defence,” but only “in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such State.” If other states didn’t furnish their share, Congress could ask complying states for more than their proportional share—but the state legislature was guaranteed the power to refuse, even in an emergency. And even when the militia was under federal command, the state legislatures would choose replacement officers as well.

You continue:

> Other countries with less recognition of the right to keep and bear arms just resort to other forms of violence

From your link, less murders per 100k than the United States (4.96) include Niger (4.44), Somalia (4.31) and Libya (2.52).

Some other developed nations: Australia (0.88), England and Wales (1.21), Germany (0.95), Norway (0.47) and Japan (0.26).

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/second-...

How many gun deaths per year would need to occur for you to reconsider?

"Second Amendment zealot" here. I'm optimistic about the future of civil rights in the area of the 2A in upcoming years.

There's a lot wrong with your post, but I'll just say that the right, like others, is written in a way that is absolute. If we want to restrict it, then we should amend the Constitution accordingly, as intended. Ideally, this should occur whenever a right is taken from us. This would make it clear what we're losing and force those proposing it justify doing so.

> There's a lot wrong with your post, but I'll just say that the right, like others, is written in a way that is absolute.

Then perhaps governments should be able to regulate it, as in the very first clause of 2A: well regulated.

And if one is going to be an Originalist à la Scalia (and there is nothing in the US Constitution that says that this is the (only) valid way to interpret it), then one needs treat the Milita like it was when the 2A was written: akin to the modern day National Guard. So if you wish to bear arms as part of the Militia, I would ask: what is your rank? who is your command officer? what unit are you a part of?

You're wrong as the 2A has consistently been assumed to mean the right of states to have militias such as the National Guard as well as individuals would also be able to bear arms. Please show me a single Founding Father that said individuals should not be able to own a gun. the only way to rescind it is with an amendment, and good luck with that since we can't even agree on an amendment to guarantee women equal rights.

> Please show me a single Founding Father that said

A corpus analysis of the words "bear" and "arms" separately and together showed:

> A search of Brigham Young University’s new online Corpus of Founding Era American English, with more than 95,000 texts and 138 million words, yields 281 instances of the phrase “bear arms.” BYU’s Corpus of Early Modern English, with 40,000 texts and close to 1.3 billion words, shows 1,572 instances of the phrase. Subtracting about 350 duplicate matches, that leaves about 1,500 separate occurrences of “bear arms” in the 17th and 18th centuries, and only a handful don’t refer to war, soldiering or organized, armed action. These databases confirm that the natural meaning of “bear arms” in the framers’ day was military.

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/antonin-scalia-was-w...

* https://archive.is/TZAJs

Doing a similar search in just the works of the Founding Fathers' works would bear similar results. For a fuller treatment on the subject I will refer you to Michael Waldman's The Second Amendment: A Biography where he goes into this:

* https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Second-Amendment/...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Waldman

See also my other comment about a literature review:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26951279

If you want to be Originalist† (à la Scalia), then ~200 years of legal history showed collective right being the accepted view; the individual right being present (not even prevalent) for only ~50 years.

† Of course nothing in the US Constitution itself says that it has to be interpreted in an Originalist way.

Funny, how this exact 6-3 conservative court has denied cert already in the past year to a number of gun cases, even where there is a circuit split. That and all your other arguments are bunk, see the other replies.

I just hope sanity prevails in the end. Whatever your political views, I think we can all agree that a world where a single gunman can kill 20 six-year-olds in a matter of a few minutes [1] is not acceptable. Whether the solution is to arm teachers, or to make assault weapons less available, there needs to be a solution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_s...

Your use of the term “sanity” is loaded. It is a complex political topic for a reason. Government should be afraid of its people. Think of the “children” ;)

Some of us believe the government should do less- in general. Terrible things happen. I would strongly prefer the government be limited to the absolute minimum activity.

Just wait til some nutter fills up a truck with explosives and blows it up next to a big building.

That's already illegal, and was illegal when it happened. Not sure what your point is?

There’s easier ways to kill mass amounts of people than a rifle.

And trying to take guns away from the lawful is like trying cars away from non drunk drivers cuz drunks drive cars.

... Or in the real world where the rest of us live, not strawman land, like taking your license and right to drive away if you get a or DWI/DUI - which is what happens to normal people. If you're rich and have good enough lawyers, you can become a congressman.

Cars are licensed, insured, and highly regulated. Do the same thing and we'll be happier than we are now.

Cars aren’t a specifically enumerated right. Also, you don’t need a permission slip to buy one. And you can buy one while underage

Guns aren't a specifically enumerated right either. (Arms are, but that can range anywhere from bow & arrows to nuclear bombs.)

Why is it that you need to be over a certain age to arm yourself? That's not specified in the constitution. If that restriction is reasonable then perhaps more restrictions can be added, such as requiring annual mental health checks.

As far as I'm concerned all gun laws are infringements.

And yes, everything from a rock to a hydrogen bomb should be protected.

So individuals should be able to own nuclear bombs? Ok.

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) - Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Terrible things don't just "happen." They have cause and effect - and people will want to change that cause and effect. That is one of the major talking points for 2A rights - that bad things can happen, so buy a gun to protect yourself (stop one of the causes, of a negative effect.)

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