Supreme Court Relists Two Second Amendment Cases

The Supreme Court has relisted two Second Amendment cases for its conference on Friday January 17. They include Snope v. Brown, which concerns whether Maryland may ban semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, and Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island, which asks whether a confiscatory ban on the possession of magazines that are in common use violates the Second Amendment. Last Friday, when it relisted these cases, the Court denied certiorari in two other Second Amendment petitions (see my posts on all four of the cases here and here).

The courts of appeals in the above two relisted cases held that no one “needs” the banned rifles and magazines that Americans nationwide choose. They rely on the false premise that the government will be there to protect them.

Recent mass tragedies reaffirm how inapt or incapable the government may be to protect lives. They are wakeup calls for why Second Amendment rights are so fundamental. It’s been said time and again, but citizens really are their own first responders.

The Los Angeles wildfires have left thousands homeless. California law doesn’t make looting during an emergency a felony. To date, some 50 looters have been arrested, and some district attorneys are advocating for changes to California’s current laws, but this is too little too late for the thousands of Americans rendered homeless. For those residents whose homes are still standing, they may have to rely on their own firearms to defend against the plundering. Given the extent of the devastation, it’s unrealistic to think that the police will be able to timely respond (if at all) to a 911 call about a potential burglary.

When it comes to police protection from human violence, New Orleans proudly declared large areas including Bourbon Street a gun-free zone but neglected to erect the bollards that may have prevented the ISIS terrorist from running over dozens of people, killing 14. That occurred early on New Years’ Day.

The same day in New York City, there were three separate stabbings on the subways. The day before, a man was pushed onto the subway tracks. The week before, a man was stabbed to death during an attempted robbery, and a woman was burned to death while sleeping on the train. All told, 579 felony assaults were reported on the NYC subway in 2024.

Not to worry, the New York Penal Law declares the subway (and countless other places) a “sensitive location” and makes it a felony to possess a firearm in such places, even by a person with a carry permit. That law was passed in reaction to, and to nullify, the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, which held that New York’s restrictions on the issuance of carry permits violate the Second Amendment. Permits had been limited to the rich and the powerful as well as those who paid bribes to the NYC License Division.

Remember when the entire NYC police department was mobilized to arrest the citizen who dared use a firearm to defend himself from robbers on the subway? Routine murders didn’t matter much, but no stops were pulled when it came to apprehending the likes of Bernard Goetz, the bespeckled nerd, aka “Subway Vigilante,” who shot four ar med robbers when they attacked him. The tradition of prosecuting those who defend themselves or threatened victims continues with the now-defunct homicide charges against the bodega clerk Jose Alba and the Good Samaritan Daniel Penny.

It’s worth recalling some of the remarks of the Justices in the oral argument in Bruen. Chief Justice John Roberts stated that “if the purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow people to protect themselves, that’s implicated when you’re in a high-crime area.” Justice Samuel Alito was more specific:

So I want you to think about people like this, people who work late at night in Manhattan, it might be somebody who cleans offices, it might be a doorman at an apartment, it might be a nurse or an orderly, it might be somebody who washes dishes. None of these people has a criminal record. They’re all law-abiding citizens. They get off work around midnight, maybe even after midnight. They have to commute home by subway, maybe by bus. When they arrive at the subway station or the bus stop, they have to walk some distance through a high-crime area, and they apply for a license, and they say: Look, nobody has told—has said I am going to mug you next Thursday. However, there have been a lot of muggings in this area, and I am scared to death. They do not get licenses, is that rig ht?

New York’s lawyer confirmed that, no, “if there’s nothing particular to them,” they don’t get carry licenses. Justice Alito responded, “all these people with illegal guns, they’re on the subway … they’re walking around the streets, but the ordinary hard-working, law-abiding people I mentioned, no, they can’t be armed?”

These comments by the Justices recall criminal justice reformer Cesare Beccaria’s truisms in Crimes and Punishments (1764), “The laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” As documented in my book The Right to Bear Arms and discussed in greater detail in Mark W. Smith’s article Enlightenment Thinker Cesare Beccaria and His Influence on the Founders, Beccaria was highly influential to our Founders like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.