Kavanaugh could overthrow the Supreme Court against gun control laws: NPR

In the battle for the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh by the Supreme Court, the usual suspects line up in support and opposition. Basically, however, there is a new entry that nervously looks at Kavanaugh's appointment. That's March For Our Lives, launched by high school students in Parkland, Florida, after filming, and which ultimately aimed to enact more effective firearms regulations.

"Kavanaugh is basically the roadblock of all we want Mirsky, the political director of March for Our Lives, 18 years old. "We believe that if we get something, he could declare it unconstitutional," he said. "It could just block everything we want to stay in place."

Of course, Kavanaugh could not do it himself, but the scholars of the second amendment right "Kavanaugh believes in a very vigorous right to carry arms to the Second Amendment, and he thinks there is little room for the constitutionality of the Firearms Act. "Adam Winkler, Professor of Law at UCLA, has written extensively on the right to bear arms

A Less Hospitable Vision of Weapons Regulation

If confirmed, Kavanaugh would join the Supreme Court which decided remarkably few cases involving firearms rights.For most of the history of the court, the judges spoke little about the second amendment, except to suggest that the right to carry arms was supposed to apply to militias and weapons for military service.But in 2008, the court declared for the first time that the right of the second amendment The vote was 5 to 4, with Judge Anthony Kennedy delivering the fifth deciding vote.

The majority opinion of the court was written by Judge Antonin Scalia, a firearms enthusiast. citing as examples the laws prohibiting criminals or persons with a history of mental illness from possessing firearms, and the laws prohibiting guns in government buildings

this limiting language was added at the insistence of Kennedy J. Now, however, Kennedy is retiring, and a Kavanaugh judge would have a visibly less welcoming view of firearms regulation.

There is still much to decide. In 2008, the court, while suggesting that many regulations would be constitutional, refused to list anything as a complete list. Instead, he has taken no position on weapons bans, restrictions or bans on ammunition department stores, on piercing bullets, on laws that prohibit or restrict who may carry a weapon. weapon in public. Indeed, the court did not even say whether constitutionality required the registration of firearms or whether significant waiting periods for arms purchases were constitutional

"A Lonely Voice"

It's not that gun rights advocates have not challenged all kinds of firearms regulations ever since . They have. And each court of appeal has examined these issues, maintained this type of regulation, with conservative Republican judges taking similar positions to the more liberal judges appointed by the Democrats.

Kavanaugh, however, was an aberration. As he said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute in 2016, on the regulation of firearms, "I've been a lonely voice."

Indeed, at the In the District Court of Columbia, Kavanaugh has staked an exceptionally strong position in favor of gun rights. In 2011, he wrote a 52-page dissent from a ruling that upheld a DC ban on "badault weapons" and magazines with more than 10 cartridges, plus broad-based requirements. ;recording. Significantly, the two judges in the majority were Conservatives, both appointed by the Republican Presidents.

In his dissent, Kavanaugh argued that the Second Amendment, as the first amendment guarantee of freedom of expression, is a fundamental right that can only be limited. The narrowest of circumstances.

"The prohibition of a clbad of weapons is not an accessory regulation," he writes. "This is tantamount to prohibiting a category of speech."

Moreover, as he says, it is not up to judges to badess public safety by badessing whether a gun law is Constitutional. On the contrary, he argued that because quick-firing weapons "are commonly used today" and "have not been traditionally prohibited", the Constitution does not allow them to be banned now.

Proponents of gun control have reason to worry

According to Professor Winkler, "One of the most worrisome things for gun control advocates on fire is that Judge Kavanaugh According to Judge Kavanaugh, Trevor Burrus, a researcher and gun rights advocate at the Libertarian Institute of Cato, agrees, noting that with the Kawasaki law, it is not a problem. Adding Kavanaugh, it is likely that new innovative ways to solve the problems of gun violence would not be acceptable – the four votes required to hear the challenges of many firearms regulations. the court apparently missed the four necessary votes to grant consideration of these cases, probably because Kennedy J. was not a sure vote.

But Burrus and Winkler both see this changing now. Burrus sees Kavanaugh plus Cl judges arence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, as "the kind of gun rights judges you could see them mowing a series of regulations", including "ten-day waiting times, magazine restrictions, things like that. "Burrus said that, in his opinion, Judge Samuel Alito might be" a little less protective of gun rights, "but that it would be" still a reliable vote "in favor of rights firearms

. is whether Chief Justice Roberts reliably provides the fifth vote to declare numerous firearms rules unconstitutional.