{"id":84411,"date":"2022-08-12T07:57:03","date_gmt":"2022-08-12T12:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=84411"},"modified":"2022-08-12T07:57:03","modified_gmt":"2022-08-12T12:57:03","slug":"84411","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=84411","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Post-Bruen New York and California Punitive Gun Control Laws are Clearly Unconstitutional<\/a><\/p>\n

After Bruen, a notable noncomplier is New York Governor Kathy Hochul. She also follows in the footsteps of her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo. Both passed their big gun control bills by sending a \u201cmessage of necessity\u201d\u2014a maneuver to prevent legislative hearings and to deprive legislators of time to read a bill before they vote on it. As the New York State Sheriffs\u2019 Association explained:<\/p>\n

The new firearms law language first saw the light of day on a Friday morning and was signed into law Friday afternoon. A parliamentary ruse was used to circumvent the requirement in our State Constitution that Legislators\u2014and the public\u2014must have three days to study and discuss proposed legislation before it can be taken up for a vote. The Legislature\u2019s leadership claimed, and the Governor agreed, that it was a \u201cnecessity\u201d to pass the Bill immediately, without waiting the Constitutionally required three days, even though the law would not take effect for two full months.<\/p>\n

The Sheriffs\u2019 Association criticized \u201cthoughtless, reactionary action, just to make a political statement,\u201d and \u201cthe burdensome, costly, and unworkable nature of many of the new laws\u2019 provisions.\u201d \u201cWe do not support punitive licensing requirements that aim only to restrain and punish law-abiding citizens who wish to exercise their Second Amendment rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The New York county clerks had no opinion on gun policy but focused instead on workability. As the Association of Clerks wrote to the governor, \u201c[i]n haste to pass the new regulations as a reaction to the recent United States Supreme Court ruling, the process as it stands now will be riddled with complex, confusing and redundant barriers of compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the governor was moving too fast to care about reality. A reporter asked her, \u201cdo you have the numbers to show that it\u2019s the concealed carry permit holders that are committing crimes?\u201d She answered, \u201cI don\u2019t need to have numbers. I don\u2019t have to have a data point to point to to say this is going to matter.\u201d Where will concealed carry permit holders be allowed to carry? \u201cProbably some streets,\u201d she explained. This directly contradicts Bruen\u2019s rule that \u201cexpanding the category of \u2018sensitive places\u2019 simply to all places of public congregation that are not isolated from law enforcement defines the category . . . far too broadly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the first reason why the new New York law is unconstitutional has nothing to do with the\u00a0right to bear<\/a>\u00a0arms. The law designates an enormous variety of places as \u201csensitive locations.\u201d Not only does the law prohibit concealed carry licensees from bringing their\u00a0guns<\/a>\u00a0into these locations, the law makes felons of proprietors, owners, and employees who simply possess arms in the location. Thus, a doctor who runs her own practice cannot have a handgun in a lock box in her office. A church cannot have volunteer security guards, such as the former police officer who thwarted a mass shooter at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs in 2007. The same goes for every school of any level, government or independent, regardless of what school wants.<\/p>\n

Under the new law, licensed carry is also banned in all forms of public transportation, including in one\u2019s own car on a ferry. All these restrictions defy Bruen\u2019s rule that \u201cnew\u201d (emphasis in original) types of \u201csensitive places\u201d may be authorized by analogy to sensitive places from the nineteenth century and before. Ferries, churches, and doctors\u2019 offices are not \u201cnew,\u201d nor are restaurants with a liquor license that serve meals to customers who don\u2019t order drinks. Nor are entertainment facilities. Firearms possession is also forbidden at \u201cany gathering of individuals to collectively express their constitutional rights to protest or assemble.\u201d In other words, if two dozen members of the county branch of New York\u2019s Conservative Party gather anywhere (even in a private home) for a meeting, they may not protect themselves.<\/p>\n

Beyond the enumerated list of sensitive locations, bringing a gun\u00a0into any building is a felony, unless the owner has posted a permission sign or granted express permission. And permit applicants must submit \u201ca list of former and current social media accounts of the applicant from the past three years.\u201d<\/p>\n

In California, S.B. 918, presently before the legislature, would expand no-carry areas in a manner similar to New York\u2019s. For the time being, California Attorney General Rob Bonta has urged county sheriffs to apply the statutory \u201cgood moral character\u201d on the model of the Riverside County Sheriff\u2019s Department: \u201cLegal judgments of good moral character can include . . . absence of hatred and racism, fiscal stability[.]\u201d The attorney general added that \u201csocial media accounts\u201d were fair game for inquiry. Further, denials could be based on \u201c[a]ny arrest in the last five years, regardless of the disposition,\u201d or any conviction in the last seven.<\/p>\n

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh suggests that it is plainly unconstitutional to deny the exercise of constitutional rights because of an arrest without a conviction. Likewise, under the First Amendment, \u201c[t]he government can\u2019t restrict ordinary citizens\u2019 actions\u2014much less their constitutionally protected actions\u2014based on the viewpoints that they express.\u201d For example, some people, such as followers of author Robin DiAngelo, believe that white people are inherently and irredeemably toxic. Other people, such as many in Hollywood, express hatred of conservatives. Wrongful as these views might be, under the First Amendment they are not a lawful basis for government retaliation. Volokh is also skeptical about the denial of rights for \u201c[l]ack of \u2018fiscal stability\u2019\u2014which may simply mean being very poor or insolvent.\u201d Indeed, poor people are generally at greater risk of criminal attack than are wealthier people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Post-Bruen New York and California Punitive Gun Control Laws are Clearly Unconstitutional After Bruen, a notable noncomplier is New York Governor Kathy Hochul. She also follows in the footsteps of her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo. Both passed their big gun control bills by sending a \u201cmessage of necessity\u201d\u2014a maneuver to prevent legislative hearings and to … 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":[11,50,8,29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-goobermint","category-rkba","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84411","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=84411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84412,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84411\/revisions\/84412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}