Four years ago, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court decided that gun laws must be rooted in history in order to comply with the Second Amendment.

But they are not always comfortable with the reality this analysis unearths.

The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Tuesday in
"Wolford v. Lopez",
a case about whether states can ban people from carrying concealed firearms on private property without getting the owner’s consent.

Under the Hawaii law at issue, any armed person who wants to enter a shopping center, restaurant, or other privately owned property that is open to the public needs “express authorization” first

—for example, a sign at a store’s entrance or a verbal “okay” from an employee.

Gun laws like Hawaii’s are often called “vampire rules” because,
like the rules that applied to vampires in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
they keep out a deadly threat unless the deadly threat receives an explicit invitation to enter.

Hawaii enacted its law in 2023 in response to "New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen", a 2022 Supreme Court case that created a new test for determining the constitutionality of gun control laws.

Under #Bruen, laws that regulate “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” violate the Second Amendment unless there is a “well-established and representative historical analogue.”

This rigid standard calls on courts to invalidate all gun laws unless, in a judge’s estimation, people in the Founding era imposed similar restrictions for similar reasons.

Bruen immediately caused chaos in the lower courts,
as it called the legality of previously uncontroversial gun laws into question.

And in July 2024, after a federal appeals court ruled that laws disarming domestic violence offenders are unconstitutional because the country did not historically disarm domestic abusers,
the Court began to backpedal.

Writing for the eight-justice majority in United States v. Rahimi, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that lower courts had “misunderstood” Bruen,
and that modern gun safety laws need only a historical “analogue,”
not a historical “twin.”

(For what it’s worth, the author of Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented in Rahimi to say that the lower court had understood his opinion just fine.)

Wolford v. Lopez is the Court’s second confrontation with the absurdities produced by Bruen’s embrace of originalism,
the idea that the Constitution has one true,
historically discoverable meaning.

At oral argument on Tuesday, the Republican justices were deeply disturbed that Hawaii defended its statute in part by pointing to an 1865 Louisiana law that prohibited people from entering private property with guns “without the consent of the owner or proprietor”
—a statute that lawmakers originally adopted in order to disarm Black people.

Nodding to the genesis of the “vampire rule” nickname,
Justice Neil Gorsuch marveled at the fact that “a lot of people” who would normally react to historical anti-Black laws
like “garlic in front of a vampire”
are now citing them to promote gun restrictions.

“I’m really interested in why,” he said.

The Bruen opinion, which Gorsuch joined, contains the answer to his question.

State lawmakers digging up historical gun regulations to justify modern gun regulations are simply doing what the Court told them to do.

It is not their fault that many historical gun regulations are racist.

https://ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/wolford-v-lopez-oral-argument-recap/

A US appeals court on Friday ruled that California’s ban on openly carrying firearms in most parts of the state was unconstitutional.

A panel of the San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals sided 2-1 with a gun owner in ruling that the state’s ⭐️#prohibition against #open #carry in counties with more than 200,000 people violated the US constitution’s second amendment right to keep and bear arms.
About 95% of the population in California, which has had some of the nation’s strictest gun-control laws, live in counties of that size.

US circuit judge #Lawrence #VanDyke, who was appointed by Donald Trump, said the Democratic-led state’s law could not stand under the US supreme court’s 2022 landmark gun rights ruling.

That decision,
"New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v #Bruen",
was issued by the court’s 6-3 conservative super-majority and established a new legal test for firearm restrictions.
The test said guns must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”.

#VanDyke, whose opinion on Friday was joined by another Trump appointee, said the latest case
“unquestionably involves a historical practice – open carry – that predates ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791”.
(like child marriage and slavery)

🔥Last #March, when an appeals court ruled that California’s law banning gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition can remain in place,

Judge #VanDyke disagreed, and included a link to a #video of himself posted on YouTube in his dissent.

“This is the first video like this that I’ve ever made,” VanDyke said.

“I share this because a rudimentary understanding of how guns are made, sold, used and commonly modified
makes obvious why California’s proposed test and the one my colleagues are adopting today simply does not work.”

In the video, VanDyke handles several guns in his chambers
and demonstrates how they are loaded and fired.

He also shows high-capacity magazines and argues that they are no different from other gun accessories that could be added to a firearm to make it more dangerous.

Under the majority’s logic, he said, that would allow the government to pick and choose any of them to be banned.

Judge Marsha S Berzon criticized VanDyke’s video in a separate opinion,
saying he was including
“facts outside the record”
and was, in essence, appointing himself an expert witness in the case.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/02/california-ban-open-carry-unconstitutional?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I don't think people really understand or grasp the extent of the danger to America represented by its Supreme Court, and its newfound doctrine of blatant misapplication of historical analysis in the post-Bruen/post-Dobbs era.

The principles articulated in #Palko v. Connecticut and #Moore v. East Cleveland were not meant to be used in the manner they are now being used by the conservative majority, nowhere more starkly so than in #Bruen and #Dobbs.

#SCOTUS #USpol

Trump and guns loom large as scandal-hit supreme court gets back to work

The US Supreme Court embarks on its next nine-month term on Monday

with public confidence in the court still reeling
following recent extreme rulings
compounded by the ethically dubious conduct of some justices.

As the new term begins, the dust cloud kicked up by controversial opinions delivered at the end of the last term has barely settled.

In particular, the July decision of the six-to-three rightwing majority to grant Donald Trump substantial #immunity from criminal prosecution for actions he carried out as president astonished even seasoned observers of the country’s top court.

“That ruling was shocking, it was a rip to the constitutional fabric, and it gave vast new power to presidents to break the law,”
Michael Waldman said at a recent webinar by the Brennan Center, the progressive thinktank, of which he is president.

Despite the ructions caused by its actions, the increasingly hard-right court shows no signs of reining itself in.
The first big case of the new term that will be addressed on Tuesday takes the justices back into the vexed area of #gun #controls.
The case, 💥Garland v VanDerStok💥, concerns “#ghost #guns”,
kits that can be assembled at home that are increasingly used to skirt around basic gun regulations
including serial numbers and federal background checks.

➡️The Biden administration imposed restrictions on ghost guns in 2022 that were promptly blocked by a lower court, sending the case to the supreme court for adjudication.

The case has potentially huge implications for gun control.
⚠️A decision that exempts ghost guns from basic regulations would punch a giant loophole in America’s already lax approach to firearms.

As it is, US courts are wrestling with chaos and confusion in the wake of recent supreme court gun rulings.

In his #Bruen judgment, the hard-right justice
🔥 #Clarence #Thomas invented a new rule that any handgun ban must comport with the country’s “history and tradition”
– a phrase which has set federal judges scrambling to try to make sense of it.

The ghost gun case has emerged out of the fifth circuit court of appeals,
which has the distinction of being the #most #rightwing appeals court in the US.
Six out of its 17 active judges were appointed by Trump.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/06/trump-guns-us-supreme-court?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other