The Constitution of the United States of America isn't intended to restrict what we, the people, can do. In fact, if you read it, you'll find remarkably little that restricts what the average citizen can do. By that, I mean it says nothing at all.
Instead, it restricts the government. Unfortunately, the state of New York figures it doesn't apply to them.
New York law precipitated the Bruen case, and the state knew how that was more or less going to go. When the decision was handed down, they sprung into action passing all kinds of laws.
But as an editorial in the New York Sun notes, their movements at that point suggest they don't think the Second Amendment either exists or, if it does, it doesn't apply to them.
Far from being chastened by the Supreme Court’s ruling, Governor Hochul, like a Jim Crow governor, vowed she wouldn’t “back down” in the campaign to limit gun rights. New York Democrats convened within days to enact a new law that used new legal language to restore many of the restrictions deemed unconstitutional by the Nine. Citizens used to have to show a “need” to carry a gun. Now they prove their “good character.”
The new law, too, deemed swaths of the state to be “sensitive places” where guns can’t be carried. Justice Thomas’s opinion had noted that, historically, “schools and government buildings,” plus “legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses,” were places “where weapons were altogether prohibited.” New York Democrats, in their zeal to limit the exercise of the Second Amendment, drove a tractor-trailer through that reasoning.
The places deemed “sensitive” — and gun-free — includes a long list of venues, plus Times Square, which was redefined as a tract comprising much of Midtown West. Albany Democrats might as well have come up with a shorter list noting where law-abiding gun owners can carry a gun for self-defense. The New York lawmakers’ refusal to accept the spirit of the high court ruling was, we noted, on a par with Governor Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door.
The animosity to the right to keep and bear arms isn’t confined to lawmakers. Earlier this year a state judge, Abena Darkeh, when she was hearing the case of a hobbyist accused of making so-called “ghost guns,” actually stated that in her courtroom the Second Amendment “doesn’t exist.” Said she: “Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.”
Except, of course, the Second Amendment most definitely does exist.
Or, conversely, if it somehow doesn't, then none of the other amendments apply to individual states, which means slavery is back on the menu. Free speech isn't really free as states can restrict it as they wish. Bible Belt states can ban Islam as religious freedom is no longer applicable.
Which we all know is absolute nonsense.
The problem is that the Second Amendment is viewed as a second-class right. While many will argue that no right is absolute, there's a far cry from trying to prohibit people from screaming things that would cause panic and potentially get people injured or killed--the ever-popular "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater" argument--and making it virtually impossible to exercise a constitutionally protected right.
What New York has done is intentionally make it as difficult as possible to carry a firearm lawfully that many will be discouraged from even trying it. After all, what's the point of carrying around a heavy firearm all day when you're not able to go pretty much anywhere?
That's not a bug. It's a feature.
So the state of New York, as a whole, doesn't think the Second Amendment applies there. They need to be smacked down hard and reminded that our rights are not to be tread upon by anyone.
