Supreme Court To Decide if Carrying Guns Outside the Home is a Constitutional Right

Free Thought Project – by Matt Agorist

Last month, a divided en banc Ninth Circuit panel ruled Americans have no right to carry guns in public, reversing a prior Ninth Circuit court decision that struck down a Hawaii firearm restriction as unconstitutional. This move subsequently laid the groundwork for the American people to be stripped of their 2nd Amendment rights outside of their home.

“There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor is any such right within the scope of the Second Amendment,” U.S. Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote for the majority of an 11-judge panel in a 127-page opinion.

Fast forward to this month, and the Supreme Court will now weigh in on the matter stemming from a different case out of New York.

According to CNBC, the Supreme Court has previously held that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to carry a gun for self-defense inside the home. Last year, it declined to issue a substantial ruling in its first major Second Amendment case in a decade.

In the case the court agreed to hear on Monday, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Keith Corlett, No. 20-843, individuals and a state organization are challenging a New York law that requires individuals to show “proper cause” in order to receive a permit for the open carry of a handgun.

Robert Nash and Brendan Koch, the individuals who brought the suit, both applied for licenses to carry handguns for self-defense and were denied. A district court reasoned that neither man had proper cause because neither faced “any special or unique danger to [their] life.”

Like the Ninth Circuit’s decision in the case above, the federal appeals court in New York upheld the denial of the license, noting the constitution does not guarantee such a right.

In their appeal, authored by former solicitor general Paul Clement, the men argued the denial of the license was unconstitutional and precedent had been previously set at least twice in District of Columbia v. Heller, decided in 2008, and McDonald v. City of Chicago, decided in 2010.

“As this Court made clear in both Heller and McDonald, the Second Amendment, at its core, guarantees a right to keep and bear arms for self-defense,” Clement wrote. “Like the threats that might precipitate a need to act in self-defense, that individual and fundamental right necessarily extends beyond the four walls of one’s home.”

Indeed, the right to self-defense is the right from which all other rights are derived. As John Locke stated, self-defense is the first law of nature. Each person owns his or her own life and no other person has a right to take that life, or hinder the preservation thereof. Only allowing an individual to defend themselves inside their own home is a de facto hinderance on one’s own preservation of life.

Moreover, the Supreme Court has held that the police have no duty to protect citizens, so that responsibility of self-defense falls squarely on the shoulders of individuals themselves.

This move from New York should come as no surprise, however, given the insanely tyrannical bill pushed earlier this year which set out to ban body armor.

New York, who has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, wants to make it a misdemeanor and potential felony for people to purchase or possess a passive means of resistance to bullets.

Unlike other attempts to ban body armor like we’ve seen in the past, this bill does not grandfather people in who already own it. In fact, the bill says that it must be turned over to the state for disposal, or you are guilty. After the passage of the bill, citizens will have 15 days to turn it in before they are declared criminals.

When there are multiple forces working behind the scenes to disarm Americans while simultaneously stripping their ability to even passively protect themselves, it is time to pay attention.

Free Thought Project