{"id":100367,"date":"2024-02-27T18:22:56","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T00:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=100367"},"modified":"2024-02-27T18:22:56","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T00:22:56","slug":"100367","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=100367","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

How is American Freedom Too Sensitive for Public Spaces?<\/a><\/p>\n

If a freedom-loving NRA member from,<\/strong>\u00a0say, 1994, had been able to look into a crystal ball and see 30 years forward to today, they\u2019d no doubt be pleased and perhaps a bit jealous, but also a little perplexed.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d notice the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in\u00a0D.C. v. Heller<\/em>\u00a0(2008),\u00a0McDonald v. Chicago<\/em>\u00a0(2010) and\u00a0New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen<\/em>\u00a0(2022), which together decree that the Second Amendment is not a second-class right. It protects each law-abiding citizen\u2019s right to own and carry firearms for self-defense and for other legal purposes. They\u2019d be pleased to see this.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d notice the massive expansion of constitutional carry, the passage of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in 2005 and the huge growth in gun ownership and of concealed carry in general and, again, they\u2019d be pleased.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d see all the new and useful carry options in handguns, holsters and more and would likely be a little jealous.<\/p>\n

Indeed, they\u2019d marvel at the renaissance for this freedom.<\/p>\n

But they\u2019d also shake their heads and clench their fists at the endless, and often novel, attacks from gun-control proponents on our Second Amendment rights.<\/p>\n

And then, finally, they\u2019d have to be perplexed as they wondered what this \u201csensitive-places\u201d thing is all about.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If, in an attempt to understand this issue, they used the crystal ball to peek in on speeches from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), they\u2019d hear them say that our Second Amendment freedom is too sensitive a thing for law-abiding citizens to practice in public. They\u2019d notice that just about everywhere, according to these governors, now has to be a \u201csensitive place,\u201d meaning that law-abiding citizens can\u2019t be trusted with their freedom in public.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d notice that it is irrelevant to Hochul and Newsom\u2014and, for that matter, to President Joe Biden (D)\u2014that criminals, including terrorists and psychopaths, tend to pick so-called \u201cgun-free zones\u201d to commit their evil atrocities in.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d also notice that, in stark contrast to these politicians\u2019 claims, a lot of modern studies show that armed citizens use guns to stop criminal attacks on themselves and others, depending on what study is cited, well over a million times per year\u2014mostly without even pulling a trigger. They\u2019d then see that, instead of using this data to steer public policy, politicians like Hochul, Newsom and Biden act like this data doesn\u2019t exist as they continue to blame good citizens who own and carry guns for the actions of criminals.<\/p>\n

Anyone with such a crystal ball would clearly see these politicians are not making good-faith arguments. It would then be clear to this person from 30 years ago that so-called \u201csensitive-place\u201d restrictions are just the latest means being used by gun-control activists in government and elsewhere to strip away this natural right from the people.<\/p>\n

The Latest Legal Fronts
\n<\/em><\/strong>Last December, for example, a federal judge in Newsom\u2019s California temporarily blocked a law written to ban the carrying of firearms in most public places. U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney granted a preliminary injunction blocking the California law. Judge Carney called the sensitive-places law \u201csweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court.\u201d The judge also said the law deprives people of the ability to defend themselves and their loved ones.<\/p>\n

But, just 10 days after Judge Carney called California\u2019s new carry law \u201crepugnant\u201d and granted a preliminary injunction blocking it, an appeals court put the injunction on hold, allowing the law to take effect.<\/p>\n

The law, signed by Newsom last September, prohibits people from carrying concealed guns in public parks, playgrounds, churches, banks, zoos and many other places. Like New York\u2019s law has tried to do, it was even written to ban concealed carry in any private store that doesn\u2019t put up a sign saying that people can carry concealed in the establishment\u2014the First Amendment makes that an unconstitutional imposition, as it forces speech.<\/p>\n

But then, as this issue was going to print, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated Carney\u2019s preliminary injunction. So, at the time, this portion of the law was back on hold.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Judge Carney did say\u00a0that, in his opinion, freedom-loving citizens challenging the law are likely to succeed in proving it unconstitutional.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever the case, as in New York, officials in California are attempting to get around the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0decision, a decision that ruled that, for a gun-control law to be constitutional, it must be \u201cconsistent with the nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Gov.<\/span>\u201cCalifornia progressive politicians refuse to accept the Supreme Court\u2019s mandate from the\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0case and are trying every creative ploy they can imagine to get around it,\u201d said California Rifle & Pistol Association President Chuck Michel.<\/p>\n

Michel also said that, under the law, concealed-carry permit holders \u201cwouldn\u2019t be able to drive across town without passing through a prohibited area and breaking the law.\u201d He also noted that the judge\u2019s decision in this case would make Californians safer because criminals are deterred when law-abiding citizens can defend themselves.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Newsom had said that Judge Carney\u2019s \u201cruling outrageously calls California\u2019s data-backed gun-safety efforts \u2018repugnant.\u2019 What is repugnant is this ruling, which greenlights the proliferation of guns in our hospitals, libraries and children\u2019s playgrounds\u2014spaces which should be safe for all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom used the phrase \u201cdata-backed gun safety\u201d as if he didn\u2019t know the actual data at issue. Citizens with concealed-carry permits\u2014or those who can lawfully carry in states with constitutional carry\u2014statistically almost never commit violent crimes. Study after study shows that these citizens are not a problem, but that they can be part of the solution if a criminal decides to harm individuals in a park, public square or other traditionally open place. It is therefore repugnant that Newsom, Hochul and Biden want to prevent good citizens from having the chance to protect themselves from those with evil intentions.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, Exactly What Are Sensitive Places?
\n<\/strong>Historically, true sensitive places have included courtrooms, the White House, congressional buildings and other very specific, controlled spaces. In all of American history, however, they have never included all public parks, private churches and private shops\u2014privately owned stores have, traditionally, been able to decide whether they want to prohibit, by their own discretion, concealed or open carry on their property.<\/p>\n

To Hochul and Newsom, however, the expansion of sensitive places is a useful way to attempt to subvert\u00a0Bruen<\/em>. The U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0decision effectively destroyed the heavily abused \u201cmay-issue\u201d licensing regimes in the jurisdictions that still used them to decide, based on the opinions or feelings of some licensing official, whether a law-abiding citizen could utilize this portion of the U.S. Bill of Rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

Basically, after the\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0ruling, anti-Second Amendment politicians found themselves facing the prospect of having to allow law-abiding citizens to buy and carry guns, so they looked for and found a possible legal mechanism in the\u00a0McDonald\u00a0<\/em>decision to which\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0made reference: \u201cTo be clear, even if a modern-day regulation is not a dead ringer for historical precursors, it still may be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster. For example, courts can use analogies to \u2018longstanding\u2019 \u2018laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings\u2019 to determine whether modern regulations are constitutionally permissible.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, gun-control activists in several state governments decided to declare that almost everywhere is a \u201csensitive area.\u201d It didn\u2019t matter to them that this expansion of sensitive-place restrictions does not have historical precedents in the law to make it constitutional.<\/p>\n

Indeed, by doing this, they ignored this part of the\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0decision: \u201cThat said, respondents\u2019 attempt to characterize New York\u2019s proper-cause requirement as a \u2018sensitive-place\u2019 law lacks merit because there is no historical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a \u2018sensitive place\u2019 simply because it is crowded and protected generally by the New York City Police Department.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, New York officials might argue that the \u201cgun-free zones\u201d they created with expansive sensitive-place restrictions do not cover the entire island of Manhattan, just every park, subway, bus, government building, church, all the restaurants and stores that don\u2019t hang signs saying citizens can carry and more.<\/p>\n

But then, no parent would accept that attempt at subterfuge from a child. Judges should see this as an obvious affront to the Supreme Court. Hochul, in fact, said as much.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn response to the Supreme Court\u2019s decision to strike down New York\u2019s century-old concealed-carry law, we took swift and thoughtful action to keep New Yorkers safe,\u201d said Gov. Hochul. \u201cI refuse to surrender my right as governor to protect New Yorkers from gun violence or any other form of harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, she is refusing to \u201csurrender\u201d to the constitutional authority of the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Hochul is again accusing lawful gun owners with concealed-carry permits of being responsible for \u201cgun violence.\u201d As all the data shows unequivocally that permit holders basically don\u2019t commit violent crimes, she must know this is a lie. She is just hoping that citizens who only read or watch media outlets favorable to her (which is a majority of those in New York) will fall for it.<\/p>\n

Some of the historical precedents now being used to justify today\u2019s expansive gun-control regulations were racist laws written to disenfranchise minorities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Put another way, Hochul is hoping that a majority of voters will blame American freedom for any trouble they see on the streets and subways rather than the bad policies from state and local officials or the criminals committing the crimes. Accomplishing this requires people to close their eyes and minds. If, for example, a person literally or figuratively holds the pages of\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0in front of their face, they indeed might miss the fact that lawfully armed citizens are not to blame for the rise in crime. If that ploy works\u2014and it might in New York\u2014it will continue to enable bad policy.<\/p>\n

A less-compliant media would ask Hochul why she is ignoring all the crime data that shows that lawfully armed citizens are not a crime problem. Such an honest public discussion might help to show that the overly broad use of sensitive-place restrictions is not a crime-fighting plan; it is, rather, simply a way to disempower the citizenry.<\/p>\n

And it is a bad idea that has spread from New York state. And not just to California. In another example, legislators in New Jersey followed New York by prohibiting carry on private property, such as in stores, unless \u201cthe property owner expressly communicates permission through express consent or specific signage.\u201d<\/p>\n

To show how outrageous this is, ask anyone who might not know much about this topic if they can imagine any other constitutionally protected right being treated this way.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s Next for Sensitive Places?<\/strong>
\nAs was noted earlier,\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0requires a current law to have an equivalent or analogous law in the Founding era, when the states ratified the Second Amendment. While the\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0opinion held that \u201cwe have generally assumed that the scope of the protection applicable to the Federal Government and States is pegged to the public understanding of the right when the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791,\u201d the majority opinion also said that \u201cthere is an ongoing scholarly debate on whether courts should primarily rely on the prevailing understanding of an individual right when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868 when defining its scope.\u201d So, perhaps, a mid-19th century gun law could be used to justify a newer gun-control law.<\/p>\n

This has sent gun-control-supporting law firms and quite a few government attorneys searching for examples to defend California\u2019s sensitive-places law. Of 13 \u201cexpert\u201d declarations filed by the state of California in\u00a0May v. Bonta<\/em>\u00a0(2023), seven don\u2019t even identify a single pre-1868 law limiting firearms carrying, one lists a few railroads that had rules requiring firearms to be in checked luggage\u2014mostly after 1868\u2014and another lists an illegal confiscation of firearms after a riot.<\/p>\n

The lawyers and researchers aren\u2019t finding much. This is why some have actually tried to use old racist regulations and laws to justify challenged gun-control laws, as the few historical precedents for such expansive gun-control regulations were often racist laws that were written to disenfranchise particular minority groups.<\/p>\n

So, to someone from 1994, this would seem a weird place for us to be, indeed. A lot of progress has been made, but keeping and winning back this freedom is still contingent on elections, as politicians nominate and vote on the judges who hear such cases. If enough judges get appointed who are willing to put their politics in the way of our freedom, then the Second Amendment may indeed be treated however Hochul, Newsom and Biden desire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How is American Freedom Too Sensitive for Public Spaces? If a freedom-loving NRA member from,\u00a0say, 1994, had been able to look into a crystal ball and see 30 years forward to today, they\u2019d no doubt be pleased and perhaps a bit jealous, but also a little perplexed. They\u2019d notice the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in\u00a0D.C. … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,50,8,29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enemies-foreign-domestic","category-goobermint","category-rkba","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100368,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100367\/revisions\/100368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}