What The Next Long-Term Fights Will Be for the Second Amendment

Second Amendment supporters have come a long way over the years. In 1982, California was having a referendum on whether to ban handguns. Now, there is a good chance that its “discretionary” carry permit scheme will be gone. There could also be a chance the Supreme Court could also wipe out semiauto and magazine bans in the near future.

Second Amendment supporters now need to answer some new questions. They are:

“What’s next?”
“How do we accomplish that objective?”
It goes without saying that financial deplatforming is the immediate threat to our Second Amendment rights, along with addressing Silicon Valley’s censorship. But what comes after that? Second Amendment supporters need to figure that out.

There will be good news. Favorable rulings in NYSRPA v. Bruen and the semiauto ban cases will make the courts a good venue to challenge other infringements. The real question will be the pace where court rulings take out anti-Second Amendment laws, and that could very well depend on how John Roberts goes.

As we discussed earlier, given the current makeup of the court, if Roberts is in the majority, he will designate who writes the opinion. But if he doesn’t, then it would be Clarence Thomas who would get to decide who writes the opinion. The retirement of Stephen Breyer will not change the balance, but his nominated replacement, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, may not be as effective an opponent as Breyer was.

The victories, though, will prompt outrage. If you think calls to pack the court are bad now, wait until massive parts of the agenda that anti-Second Amendment extremists have pushed get declared unconstitutional. Second Amendment supporters may need to look to winning general elections in order to defend against court-packing.

Despite the need to defend against efforts to pack the court, there will be changes – and the need – to take the offensive on the legislative front. For instance, it may be time to figure out how to either roll back who is prohibited or to find a way for people to remove themselves from being prohibited.

In one sense, Second Amendment supporters may be on the first steps of the path to do just that with the NICS Denial Notification Act. One thing we will need to do in order to reverse a number of dubious categories of “prohibited persons” is going to be getting the hard data on what exactly, people are denied for.

In fact, many of the battles we will face now will be slow and grueling in many ways. Oftentimes, the biggest wins at the federal level will be about what doesn’t happen. The most important victories will be the ones where Second Amendment supporters defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists via the ballot box at the federal, state, and local levels.