The Second Amendment is pretty clear. Our right to keep and bear arms is a right that "shall not be infringed." It's a right reserved for "the people," and not "the state" as some other rights are. Nothing else in the text should matter.

But there are some implications of that right as it's written. Namely that if we are to have the right to keep and bear arms, we would need to maintain the right to acquire arms.

A no-brainer, right?

One would think. However, Larry Keane notes over at the Buckeye Firearms Association that not everyone sees it that way.

There’s an interesting — if not devious — trend emerging in some Second Amendment cases. The first step of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen test is to ask whether the conduct at issue is covered by the text of the Second Amendment which protects a pre-existing “right to keep and bear arms.” Some lower courts in purporting to apply the Bruen test are upholding gun control laws by holding that you do not have a Second Amendment right to buy a firearm.

That’s intellectually dishonest, to say the least. The ability to freely approach the gun counter to legally purchase a firearm is paramount to exercising the Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms. There is no “keeping” of firearms if there is no legal right to lawfully acquire those same firearms. The ramifications of this flawed legal reasoning are self-evident. The government could simply ban the buying (and selling) of firearms and therefore eviscerate the Second Amendment all without infringing upon the right.

Right to buy

The most recent example comes from New Mexico, where a federal district court judge refused to preliminarily enjoin the state’s seven-day waiting period for purchasing a firearm. There were several serious concerns with this decision, including the judge’s determination that the lengthy waiting period doesn’t constrain the rights to keep and bear arms. The judge contended that the waiting period only minimally burdens the “ancillary right to acquire firearms.”

In other words, the right to acquire guns isn't really the same thing as the right to keep and bear arms... at least according to these judges.

Which is bat-guano insane on the face of things.

First, we have the fact that many of the same people who push this kind of thing also make similar arguments about so-called ghost gun bans. So if I don't have a right to buy a gun explicitly and there's no explicit right to make one, then just how is anyone supposed to keep and bear arms? I'm sorry, but "not my problem" isn't a sufficient response.

These are our rights, and if you have a right to own and carry something, you most definitely have a right to acquire it. The fact that these restrictions exist at all is anathema to those constitutionally protected liberties.

And the fact that courts claiming to be applying Bruen are upholding these restrictions is an even bigger issue.

My hope is that this doesn't last, but I'm not holding my breath.