Today in newspaper headlines that make you go: hu?

From USA Today:

Supreme Court may expand Second Amendment rights despite repeal of disputed gun restrictions

Way to make “expand Second Amendment rights” sound like a bad thing.

I forgot, it is.

I’m not thinking under the paradigm where the Supreme Court exists, not to expand Constitutional rights, but justify the expanse of big government by legislating from the bench.

The Supreme Court may be on the verge of expanding gun rights for the first time in nearly a decade. What’s surprising is how it got there.

The Court was petitioned.

The court on Monday will hear a challenge to an obscure New York City rule that set such rigid restrictions on transporting legally owned guns that it was repealed in July.

Obscure only in that Liberals don’t know the gun laws on the books.  It’s not obscure for the legal gun owners in NYC that were screwed by it.

But it turns out that wasn’t what they really wanted. Backed by the National Rifle Association and the Trump administration, the challengers to New York’s abandoned restrictions are hoping the high court refuses to declare the case moot. That would give them a chance to win the biggest Second Amendment victory since landmark rulings a decade ago affirmed the right to keep guns at home for self-defense.

It’s a conspiracy to expand Constitutionally protected civil liberties, and therefore tread on the self-granted right of Progressives to oppress those they disagree with.

Faced with a defunct ban on transporting guns outside city limits, the increasingly conservative court majority could render a decision making clear what some justices believe: that the Second Amendment extends beyond the home, and that lower courts should view state and local limits on carrying guns in public with skepticism.

Those dastachrome://bookmarks/rdly conservatives thinking that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” means exactly that.  Don’t they know it means the opposite?

“This would be a strange case in which to go big,” says Joseph Blocher, a professor at Duke University School of Law and co-director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. “Yet the stakes going forward are potentially huge.”

I’m not a lawyer from Duke, but I understand why SCOTUS took this case up.  When it comes to civil rights law, especially gun laws, the Court likes “perfect” cases, with little nuance and no hairsplitting.  They probably saw this law as so egregious that striking it down would be rather cut and dry.

Gun rights groups were surprised in January when the high court agreed to hear the case. Gun control groups were surprised in October when the justices refused to jettison it, even after the city and state erased restrictions that were likely unconstitutional.

Both actions went against the court’s recent modus operandi when it comes to guns: avoidance. Since its 2008 and 2010 rulings striking down gun restrictions in the District of Columbia and Chicago, the court has refused to hear dozens of cases challenging lesser limits on who can own what types of guns, where they can be taken, what requirements must be met and more.

Those were controversial cases and SCOTUS is made up of cowards who shy away from parsing details.

During that time, lower courts have resolved more than 1,000 Second Amendment cases, ruling more than 90% of the time in favor of gun control measures, according to a study by Blocher and Southern Methodist University assistant law professor Eric Ruben. Since Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 that killed 20 students and six staff members, more than 300 gun safety laws have been passed.

The trend has frustrated gun rights groups as well as conservative justices who say federal and state court judges are not applying a stringent test to most gun restrictions.

Here is to hoping that Cocaine Mitch McConnell and Trump reverse this trend by shifting the makeup of the lower courts.

The court has changed since then. Gone is retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who signed on to the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller after ensuring it would leave the door open to state and local restrictions.

In his place: Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who dissented as a federal appeals court judge from a ruling upholding the district’s subsequent ban on semi-automatic rifles and its firearms registration requirements. Kavanaugh said courts should analyze gun bans and regulations based on the Second Amendment’s “text, history and tradition.”

Good.

Enter an extreme rule such as New York City’s, which barred licensed handgun owners from taking their guns beyond its five boroughs, even to second homes or shooting ranges. Federal district and appeals courts upheld the 18-year-old rule, but it looked like a goner at the Supreme Court.

Extreme law makes for an easy takedown.  A perfect case.

Gun control groups such as Brady, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence feared something else: a decision that would expand public carry rights elsewhere, including in nine states that give law enforcement officials discretion to deny licenses. Those are California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Hawaii.

From their frothing mouths to God’s ears.  C’mon 50 state CCW reciprocity.

Rather than fight it out in court, the city repealed the rule, and the state replaced it with a statute that permits the previously banned transportation of firearms. The two liberal-dominated governments felt that would end the case.

Remember how hard the fight was to change NYC gravity knife laws to stop the NYPD from arresting construction workers for carrying folding box cutters despite every civil rights group and union in the city arguing for the repeal?

So if NYC repealed a gun law, you know they know how bad it was.

The biggest issue left unresolved by the Heller decision was the right to carry firearms, either concealed or openly. When that case was decided, about 40 states already permitted it, but some big ones – notably California and New York – had major limitations. They still do.

“For too long, lower courts have stubbornly controverted the Supreme Court’s ruling in D.C. v. Heller,” says Jason Ouimet, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. “The nation’s highest court should defend all Americans – and its own precedents – in a manner that vindicates the fundamental nature of the rights enshrined within the Second Amendment.”

If conservatives have their way, the court could extend Second Amendment rights beyond the home, or simply require that lower court judges demand more specific justifications for state and local restrictions.

Yes, yes they could, and if they do, it will be glorious.

Hannah Shearer, litigation director at the Giffords Law Center, notes the dispute before the court involves “a law that only existed in New York City and currently exists nowhere – it looks like a small issue, but they’re making very sweeping legal claims.”

Did someone say Roe or Obergefell?  When the court makes broad sweeping changes that are pro-Left-leaning positions, it’s not a crisis.  It’s not so much fun for them when the shoe is on the other foot.

Buoyed by recent victories, gun control groups and their allies worry that what the justices write when deciding the New York case could influence lower courts to strike down other restrictions.

“The court doesn’t have to look like it’s making a big change,” says Adam Winkler, a UCLA School of Law professor and Second Amendment expert. “It can make a big change by setting the foundations for future cases.”

The word is “Precedent” and it will be great if that’s in our favor.

I will be paying attention to the news closely to see how this case goes.

The Court stands to expand civil liberties and that is driving the Left to panic.