As expected, the Supreme Court has struck down Roe vs. Wade.  This decision follows closely on the Court’s trashing New York’s restrictions on carrying guns outside the home. The two decisions are closely related.  Both are central to the culture wars waged by the American right over the past four decades.

I’ve already written about the Court and abortion.  Let’s take a look at the gun ruling.

According to Justice Thomas, the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun in public.  This claim is consistent with the Court’s historic 2008 Heller decision, which held that the Second Amendment protects individuals’ rights to bear arms.

Does it? The Second Amendment is very short, so we can easily consider it in its entirety:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Now, I’m not a lawyer, much less a constitutional lawyer, but I have a pretty good understanding of the English language, and I have no trouble seeing that the plain English meaning of the above text premises the right of the people (Nb—the people, not individuals) to bear arms on the necessity of a well-regulated Militia for the security of the State.  What Militia? The reference isn’t to outfits like the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys.  It’s to the state-sanctioned militias that provided for the common defense in the late 18thy century, in the absence of a standing US army.  No such militias exist today.  So, the Second Amendment is simply an anachronism, not applicable to contemporary American society.  Heller, and its 2022 follow-up, are simply nonsense.

What makes Supreme Court justices—all of them highly intelligent, learned individuals—spout nonsense? Politics. The justices in question are all highly dedicated partisans of the “conservative” movement in America. (I tend to put “conservative” in quotes because most self-described conservatives are more accurately describable as radical reactionaries.) An absolute requirement of membership in the right-wing movement is to pay homage to the gun culture. It is simply inconceivable that any of the six rightists on the Court would have breached this requirement in favor of a literal reading of the Constitution.  And while the radicals on the Court are highly skeptical of the implicit Constitutional right to privacy on which Roe vs. Wade was decided, they have no difficulty in finding in the terse wording of the Second Amendment an implicit individual right to bear arms.

NY Gov Hochul and Mayor Adams have both expressed shock at the gun decision.  They, and other leading Democrats, have to go further.  They have to say that an activist Supreme Court dominated by right-wing radicals for the next generation is simply not acceptable.  Court reform—including the expansion of the Court’s membership to restore ideological balance—must become a leading item on the progressive agenda.

Note: This could be my last post on this website.  I’m considering moving my blog from the website to Substack, a popular blogging platform.  I see both advantages and disadvantages to this move.  If any readers have experience with Substack and have opinions thereon, I’d appreciate hearing from you: drop me an email (afgreco.ny@gmail.com).