If This Is the Best Anti-Gunners Can Muster, We Have Nothing to Worry About

Brady president Kris Brown, though, is a special case, because everything I've seen from her is about the most idiotic thing anyone could potentially say in a given instance. Flipping out that guns can be shipped through the mail at all, even though that's always been a thing? Yep. Her offering moronic advice? Yep. And then we have this banger that will never get old, even though the show she celebrated didn't make it past the first season.

Today, we've got her Substack, where she "breaks down" why she thinks the Supreme Court got both Hemani and Wolford wrong.

Let's start with Wolford, because this is my favorite. Now, to be clear, she's rephrasing the dissent in the case, but the fact that she thinks this is a legitimate argument is just...**chef's kiss**

The effect of this decision in practice is that if a state wants to restrict firearms in commercial areas, the private business owner must actively (and proactively) prohibit their carry.

In a thorough – and vociferous – dissent joined by Justice Sotomayor, Justice Jackson argued that the majority ignored property rights in favor of gun rights. Importantly, she noted that in almost every other aspect of private property – such as setting up a table at the grocery store to sell Girl Scout cookies – we ask for permission before we assume it.

Except that Girl Scouts are engaging in commerce on someone else's property, which isn't an extension of their constitutionally protected rights. Further, let's say that a Girl Scout troop decided not to ask permission. Let's say they just popped up some tables and started selling cookies. What then?

They'll either be asked to leave, or the police will come and tell them to leave. If they refuse to, they'll be arrested for criminal trespass or whatever similar charge may exist in a given place.

Strangely, that's the same thing that happens when someone is found to be carrying a gun, but the owner doesn't want that in their building. The presumptions here are the same.

Plus, the Court didn't shut down the notion of property owners forbidding firearms on their property. They simply said the state had no authority to decide that the default was that guns were prohibited.

And Justice Jackson also delivered this blisteringly honest line: “Today’s decision makes one thing clear: The Court’s objective is protecting guns, not consistently preserving any principle of law.”

Justice Jackson’s dissent understood that the Wolford case wasn’t ever about limiting freedom. It was about respecting the freedom of business owners, and the people who work at and frequent those businesses – restaurant servers, grocery store workers, and families simply walking around a mall – who may not want firearms present unless they have explicitly said so.

And, again, the Wolford decision didn't say businesses had to accept guns. I'm a big property rights supporter, so I'm fine with a business owner telling me I can't have my gun in their business. It's usually a sign I don't want to do business with them in the first place, after all. Still, no one said they can't, but because this is a civil liberty, yes, they have to explicitly say so, just as they would if they were excluding anyone else from exercising a different civil liberty.

I can't believe people can't understand this, and I can't believe Brown actually buys this crap.

But Brown wasn't done, because we have the Hemani case. Interestingly, though, Brown doesn't seem to have a major issue with the decision, even though she'd already said it made her sick to read.

Instead, she just thinks we need to go back to the bad old days of "interest balancing."

The real story, however, lies in the concurring opinion by Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor. Justice Jackson wrote that the Bruen standard established in June 2022 is bad and should be tossed out.

Jackson instead suggested that we reinstate the long-standing balancing test the Court rejected in Bruen. Such a balancing test is common in constitutional law challenges, and it recognizes that constitutional rights must be balanced with the interests of the government that is trying to protect all of us. She noted that by sending judges and lawmakers on a fishing expedition for historical trivia instead of a careful analysis of a law’s effectiveness and necessity, courts will make arbitrary decisions and legislatures’ hands will be tied by history when considering common-sense public safety laws.

Both Justices see the human consequences. They understand that we are not living in 1791 or 1868, the years that the Bruen test cares about most. We are living in a nation where guns are the number one killer of our kids and impacts are disparate—Black & Brown Americans are being killed by guns at alarming rates. These are realities our Founders never faced nor contemplated in the era of muskets, not AR-15s. In essence, Sotomayor and Jackson said that a fair reading of the Constitution does not create any conflict between protecting human life and protecting liberty.

Now, obviously, Brown favors interest balancing because, frankly, it's the only way gun control can win in the courts. The idea that our civil liberties should be "balanced" against the government's interests is always problematic, though, because how long until it's decided that the government's interests mean they should regulate what the press has to say about anything it does? 

Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it won't happen.

And let's keep in mind that gun control, contrary to what Brown believes, doesn't work. I get that she thinks that violent crime is increasing, even when it's not, but the truth is that violent crime reached historic levels only after the Bruen decision. I'm intellectually honest enough to say that we don't have sufficient evidence that it dropped because of Bruen, but I do say we have enough evidence to know that the doomsaying people like Brown engaged in afterward just hasn't materialized.

So why should we listen to a concurring opinion on a case that simply says we should go back to the bad old days even though life is better than it was before? It's absolutely insane.

All in all, what we have with Brown here is a prime example of an anti-gunner who lives so far in her own echo chamber that she doesn't realize that everything she believes has already turned out to be false, but isn't smart enough to at least hedge her arguments so that they're not so easily shredded. The fact that she's picking the dumbest arguments by the Supreme Court justice most likely to need things spelled out for her in crayons isn't helping her case.