Editorial: Tough path for gun legislation becomes less clear

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment right is not unlimited…. [It is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

— U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in District of Columbia v. Heller

Supporters of effective and reasonable restrictions on firearms should savor the victory in the U.S. Senate’s modest but necessary package of legislation adopted Thursday; coupled with the House’s concurrence Friday, it could be the last such win in Congress they will see for years.

That’s not solely because — following 29 years of inaction since bipartisan passage of the Brady Bill in Congress — it took a month of sustained public outcry following back-to-back massacres of innocents in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas, along with the devastating white noise of daily gun violence, to move enough Republicans in the Senate to side with Democrats to adopt the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

It’s also because hopes for future legislation — not just at the federal level but the state level as well — have now been complicated by Thursday’s other news: the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning a New York state law that permitted concealed weapons permits only to those who could show a special need to carry firearms other than to a shooting range or hunting grounds. Along with New York, similar laws in five other states are now at risk.

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Writing for the 6-3 majority, Justice Clarence Thomas broadened the right to keep and bear arms beyond the court’s 2008 Heller ruling, which affirmed the right to keep firearms in the home for self-defense, expanding it to public areas outside the home.



https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-tough-path-for-gun-legislation-becomes-less-clear/