Earlier this year, the Court agreed to take up a case challenging New York’s “may issue” carry laws, which upset gun control advocates to no end. Yesterday, SCOTUS also granted cert in a case dealing with a Mississippi law restricting abortions after 15 weeks. The Court is supposed to hear cases that have a fundamental impact on our rights as Americans, but some think the Supreme Court is wading into the culture war by deciding to hear the cases.

The Supreme Court has placed itself back on the frontlines of the U.S. culture wars by taking up major cases on abortion and guns, with rights cherished by millions of Americans – and potentially the future of the nation’s top judicial body itself – on the line.

And to add to the drama, rulings in the two cases are expected to come next year in the run-up to mid-term elections in a politically polarized United States that will decide if President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats maintain control over both chambers of Congress.

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The justices on April 26 agreed to take up a challenge backed by the National Rifle Association to New York state’s restrictions on people carrying concealed handguns in public, a case that could further damage firearms control efforts nationally.

The two cases will be argued and decided during the court’s next term, which runs from October to June 2022.

The problem here is that gun rights aren’t a “culture war” issue, they’re a civil liberty issue, and I resent the hell out of anyone claiming otherwise.

Now granted, they were considered part of the “culture war” since the very beginning, but that nomenclature was wrong from the start. The truth is that gun rights transcends any aspect of such a conflict. It’s far too important.

See, the Second Amendment explicitly protects the right to keep and bear arms. There’s no ambiguity provided as it also says that right “shall not be infringed.”

To me, that’s not cultural. That’s precisely what the Supreme Court is there to address. They took up the case because it’s clear that New York is infringing on the rights of its citizens.

Look, I deal with cultural issues all the time. I’m a bit of a culture warrior, though I don’t do it here. (Check out my substack if you haven’t already for those goodies.) And while there are a lot of cultural issues to be addressed, the Second Amendment should rise above all of that.

In this day and age, gun rights transcend politics. It transcends culture. It’s a bipartisan issue that is increasingly being embraced by core Democratic demographics such as minorities and women. It goes beyond culture.

And it should.

Our civil liberties are enshrined in the Bill of Rights not because they’re our culture, but because they shape not just our culture but our entire system of civil rights. While they left some things out back in the day, they’re pretty clear on what you can and can’t do.

It’s funny, the case the Court ruled just ruled on was a Fourth Amendment case, but it involved guns. Was that the Court delving into the culture wars?

Hardly.

Maintaining our civil liberties goes well beyond that kind of thing. It’s essential to the health of our republic, and it’s why the Supreme Court was right to take up the case. While I have no doubt plenty would have preferred the Court to step aside on this one, they didn’t. They’re stepping up to address the rights of the American people.

Frankly, that goes beyond trying to figure out who should be using which bathrooms.