The tears of journalists and editors with an axe to grind against the Right to Keep and Bear Arms are sweet indeed, so let us savor.
Delaware Online is concerned for what this could mean for Delaware gun laws, stating that we just can’t have “common sense.” Such hand wringing is unwarranted. In the lower counties CDWLs are effectively will-issue already, and Delaware is also an unlicensed open carry state. That makes the situation different from must other restrictive may-issue states. I’m not sure I’d feel good about challenging Delaware’s law, even if Peruta prevails in the end.
The LA Times is naturally wringing their hands over the ruling, and in the process gets nearly everything wrong.
There are two problems with this conclusion. In 2008, the Supreme Court did rule that the 2nd Amendment protected an individual right to “keep and bear arms” — a decision that upended a long-standing consensus that the amendment was intended only to provide for a “well-regulated militia.”
There was never any such consensus. Research on this topic began in the 1970s, you know, right after the federal government gave people a reason to inquire about the Second Amendment. The consensus of that research was what informed the Heller decision. That consensus only exists in the ignorant minds of the LA Times editorial board, who are not experts on this subject, and don’t even have the barest of educations on it.
Justice Antonin Scalia‘s majority opinion made clear that the case involved only prohibitions on handguns “in the home.”
I don’t think these people even read the Heller decision. I wouldn’t even involve myself in a forum debate with someone this ignorant, to be honest. “Go read the Heller decision in its entirety, and then you might relieve enough ignorance to even have this debate,” is what I would say.
Equally important, Scalia acknowledged that the right to bear arms is “not unlimited.” He specifically noted that “the majority of the 19th century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the 2nd Amendment or state analogues.
Read the Peruta decision too, while you’re at it. Because the prohibition on concealed weapons still allowed for open carry of firearms, which California law also prohibits. Heller mentioned that as well. Peruta flows from the Heller decision. The editorial board of the LA Times does know how to read, right?
The Brady Campaign seems to be the only gun control group out there to do a formal press release about the Peruta decision, and they essentially say it’s an “aberrant” decision, out of touch with history, and will just allow more people to defend themselves from people beating their heads into the pavement, and isn’t that an awful thing?
