NEWS
ANALYSIS
In One Day, Washington Goes in Two Directions on
Guns
The Supreme Court delivered a victory for gun rights,
while the Senate passed a gun control bill for the first time in decades.
Glenn
Thrush
By Glenn
Thrush
June 23,
2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/us/politics/senate-supreme-court-guns.html
WASHINGTON
— The nation’s capital, so often a backdrop for inaction, had seldom witnessed
anything quite like it — two branches of government splintering in opposite
directions on guns, one of the country’s most divisive issues, in the space of
a single day.
Around 10
p.m. on Thursday, the Senate passed a bipartisan gun control bill that however
incremental is still the most significant gun safety measure in decades. Yet 12
hours earlier, the Supreme Court delivered a decisive, sharply partisan blow to
gun regulations, jolting national firearms policy to the right, perhaps for
years.
The result
was a monumental victory in the courts for the gun rights movement and a less
significant but important legislative accomplishment for those demanding a
response to the recent massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas. For the country
there was an ever deepening confusion about the direction of national gun
policy in an era of mass shootings, rising crime and a surging conservative
push to expand gun rights and the reach of the Second Amendment.
“What a
day,” said Adam Skaggs, chief counsel with the Giffords Law Center, the legal
arm of the national gun safety group created by former Representative Gabrielle
Giffords, the Arizona Democrat and survivor of a 2011 shooting near Tucson.
“The Senate
was finally getting to bipartisan consensus on these reforms, mainly because a
bunch of Republican senators heard from their voters that something needed to
be done,” he added. “Then the Supreme Court completely hijacks everything with
an interpretation of gun rights that is completely out of step with what
Democrats, independents and even a lot of Republicans wanted.
“Where does
it all go from here?”
The court’s
decision to strike down New York’s 100-year-old law restricting the carrying of
guns in public is the most sweeping ruling on firearms in years, and only the
court’s second major statement on the right to keep and bear arms.
In the
majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas compared restrictions on Second
Amendment rights to limits on the right of free expression under the First
Amendment and every American’s Sixth Amendment right to “confront the witnesses
against him.” Critics were quick to point out that exercising those rights
seldom involved the use of lethal force.
In the
short term, the ruling forces five states, including New York, California and
New Jersey, to drastically loosen their gun regulations.
In his
sweeping 130-page opinion, Justice Thomas wrote that states may continue to ban
guns in “sensitive” public places — like schools, courts and government
buildings — but warned that local authorities should not define the category of
such places too broadly.
“Put
simply,” he added, “there is no historical basis for New York to effectively
declare the island of Manhattan a ‘sensitive place’ simply because it is
crowded and protected generally by the New York City Police Department.”
While the
majority decision did not explicitly address federal regulation of firearms,
Justice Department lawyers are assessing the consequences of the ruling on
their procedures. Some restrictions, they believe, like the one on carrying
weapons into courts, will remain in effect — but they are less sure about
restrictions in post offices, museums and other facilities where guns are
currently banned.
Although
the court was widely expected to weaken state gun laws, the timing was a slight
surprise: Most aides in the Capitol and at the White House believed the
widely-anticipated decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v.
Bruen would come next week, as the court neared the coda of a term expected to
be capped by an ending of Roe v. Wade.
This week,
the focus was squarely on the Senate, which had managed to hash out a hard-won
compromise on a package of gun regulations that would expand background checks
for potential gun buyers under the age of 21, include serious dating partners
in a law that prevents domestic abusers from purchasing firearms and provide
federal money for state “red flag” laws to allow guns to be temporarily taken
from people deemed dangerous.
With the
passage of the measure on Thursday evening, June 23, 2022, became one of the
most important days in America’s troubled centuries-old history with guns.
The Supreme
Court decision — denounced by Lisa Monaco, the No. 2 Justice Department
official, as “deeply disappointing” while a defiant Mayor Eric Adams of New
York vowed to keep the city from becoming the “wild, wild West” — was seen as
helping Democrats make the case for passing the Senate bill.
“The
landscape for gun violence prevention laws is different today than it was just
48 hours ago,” said Kris Brown, the president of Brady, one of the country’s
oldest gun control groups. “That decision has only underscored the urgent need
for the Senate to act and pass this bill.”
Gun rights
organizations in turn welcomed the ruling as a necessary constitutional check
against the growing restrictions imposed in New York, California, New Jersey
and other states. “The court has made clear that the Second Amendment right to
bear arms is not limited to the home,” said Larry Keane, a top official with
the gun industry’s top trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
The
decision gave some potential political cover to the Senate Republicans who have
backed the gun control bill, which earned its main Republican sponsor, Senator
John Cornyn of Texas, a fusillade of boos from gun rights activists at a state
party gathering last week.
Senator
Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, followed up a statement
applauding the bipartisanship of the legislation with a blistering defense of
gun rights in the wake of the ruling.
“Great day
for the Second Amendment,” he wrote. “The Supreme Court’s decision is yet
another example of reinforcing the concept that the Second Amendment is an
individual right rooted in the ability to defend oneself and property.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário