While the Bruen decision laid out some rather specific groundwork for what gun laws can be considered constitutional and which couldn't, it's obvious that lower court judges aren't rational creatures, just rationalizing ones.
After all, how many times have we seen courts completely ignore the requirement for a historic analog, despite the clear directives from the Court? Yes, Rahimi muddied the waters a bit and gave greater leeway to the lower courts as to what can be considered an analog; sometimes, they don't even bother.
Enter Illinois and its ban on concealed carry on public transit.
Gun rights groups are asking the Supreme Court to take up the case because the lower court completely botched it.
A coalition of pro-gun organizations, led by the National Rifle Association, has filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court requesting that it hear the constitutional challenge to Illinois’ public transit carry ban.
The NRA, along with the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, the Gun Owners Action League, the New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate and the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, filed the brief in Schoenthal v. Raoul, which challenges Illinois’ law that prohibits concealed carry licensees from carrying firearms on public transportation unless the firearms are unloaded and secured—effectively rendering them useless for lawful self-defense.
In a poorly thought-out decision last September, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban, ruling that “crowded spaces” like subways qualify as “sensitive places” where the government may broadly prohibit the exercise of the right to bear arms.
“The Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to self-defense… It does not bar the people’s representatives from enacting laws—consistent with our nation’s historical tradition of regulation—that ensure public transportation systems remain free from accessible firearms,” the court ruling stated.
The court added that the country’s Founding Fathers likely never envisioned people traveling around in “crowded and confined metal tubes.”
The Founding Fathers also never envisioned people communicating with the entire world while they're sitting on the toilet taking a dump, but that's a thing now, too. Does the First Amendment stop working because of that lack of a specific vision?
No, it doesn't.
And I find the whole idea that a place simply being crowded somehow automatically means it's sensitive as troubling from the start. I mean, the NRA annual meeting is crowded. SHOT Show is crowded. GRPC is crowded.
There are guns, however, all over the place, and there's never been an issue.
So yeah, I get why these groups want the Supreme Court to step in. I echo their calls, for what it's worth, because this is a travesty.
The truth of the matter is that in many large cities, personal transportation isn't practical for many people. Taking taxis and Ubers all the time is expensive, leaving public transportation as the only viable option for them to traverse the city. Denying them the ability to take a gun onto public transit not just makes them more vulnerable there, but at all points from leaving home until they return.
It basically bans them from carrying a firearm at all unless they're going somewhere within walking distance.
And, having been in Chicago before, even that can involve large crowds, which the lower courts already suggested are de facto sensitive places, so how long before that's restricted under the same rationale?
I hope the Supreme Court agrees and hears this case, then smacks it down and specifically calls out the stupidity of equating crowds to sensitivity.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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