Right now, a lot of us are pretty upset that the Supreme Court has refused so many Second Amendment cases this year. There have been a ton, and after all the blood, sweat, and tears spent getting Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh confirmed to the Court, we kind of thought we’d get a little something for our trouble.
We haven’t.
However, that might not be such a bad thing.
No, I get why you’re upset, and I share it, but there’s also a possibility that the reason those cases aren’t being heard is because justices are trying to defend the Second Amendment.
You see, while conservative justices theoretically outnumber liberal justices, it’s never as cut and dried as it may seem. There are a couple of justices you know damn good and well stand with the Second Amendment, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, but many may or may not stand with us. Some have been on the bench a while and may have changed their views from when they were confirmed. Others may have just said what it took to get confirmed and hold no real love for the right to keep and bear arms.
All in all, we don’t really know who is thinking what unless they write the decisions themselves. Even then, some of it may well be a compromise and not what they really believe.
So, when we look at the recent cases, we tend to believe that if the Court decides to hear them, they’ll go our way. I know I’ve written that more times than I care to count, and I believe that to be true.
However, I’m also not in chambers with these guys. I don’t know them like the other justices know one another.
What if the reason these cases keep getting denied is because some of the justices know that someone on the Court will side with the liberal justices going forward and completely jack up our Second Amendment rights?
The Supreme Court tends to be big on precedent. They don’t like overturning what a previous Court decided, which means Second Amendment decisions made today could have ramifications going forward for decades.
If someone on the Court has decided to throw in with the gun grabbers, then sending the cases packing avoids that. While it means those infringements remain, they remain based on lower court rulings, not a decision by the Supreme Court itself. That means future courts can still make decisions based on precedents like Heller and McDonald rather than newer ones set by an anti-gun Court.
Now, I’m not saying definitively that’s what is happening. I don’t have any contacts on the Court, and I have no more information than you do. I’m just spitballing about why the Court might be so reticent to take on a Second Amendment case. After all, they’re not elected, and they serve for life, so they don’t have to fear public opinion on a ruling, so why would they refuse to hear these cases?
While we can come up with dozens of other scenarios as to why they’d do it, we need to at least acknowledge the possibility that it may because not all of them care about the Second Amendment.
