Justice Clarence Thomas’ sweeping defense of the right to carry guns ignores national tragedy of mass shootings and other violence, writes the Editorial Board.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott passes in front of a memorial outside Robb Elementary School to honor the victims killed in this week's school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Sunday, May 29, 2022. Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment guarantees Americans’ right to own firearms, lower-court judges have been wrestling with the decision’s explicit caveat that that right is subject to “reasonable” regulations.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas ruled that New York’s requirement that licenses to carry handguns in public be granted only with good cause is at odds with American history, and therefore with the Second Amendment. Gun violence, the court reasoned, is an old problem. If the Founders had wanted to limit handguns to those who could show special need for them, they would have adopted such laws in the 18th century. They didn’t, and neither may New York, Thomas writes.
Controversial public safety implications? That’s one way to describe the hellscape of modern gun violence. Parents in Uvalde, whose children were so disfigured by AR-15 rounds used to kill them they had to be identified by DNA samples, may have other words to use. Communities in Tulsa, Buffalo and others are also still reeling from recent mass shootings. But mass shootings are hardly the only ways that America’s extraordinarily permissive gun culture has turned deadly.
But Thomas waves off gun violence in America as nothing more than a present-day example of a very old problem. Even in the 18th century, he writes, New York was concerned about gun violence in the city.
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