FUNshoot News - SCOTUS Decision
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Supreme Court of the United States
New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen
Docket No.: 20-843
Op. Below: 2nd Cir.
Argument: Nov 3, 2021
Opinion: Jun 23, 2022
Vote: 6-3
Term: OT 2021
Holding: New York’s proper-cause requirement for obtaining an unrestricted license to carry a concealed firearm violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
Judgment: Reversed and remanded, 6-3, in an opinion by Justice Thomas on June 23, 2022. Justice Alito filed a concurring opinion. Justice Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion, in which Chief Justice Roberts joined. Justice Barrett filed a concurring opinion. Justice Breyer filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Sotomayor and Kagan joined.
Read the full coverage of this decision:
https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/new-york-state-rifle-pistol-association-inc-v-bruen
A Rationale for the Decision
Does Carrying A Pistol Make You Safer?
It’s puzzling that so many Americans are choosing to arm themselves at a time when the FBI tells us violent crime and property crime have been falling dramatically for two decades.
“It’s puzzling that so many homeowners are choosing to maintain fire extinguishers at a time when the data tells us fire incidents have been falling dramatically” would sound about the same.
Mr. Burnett's article is definitely worth a read and I think he did a pretty good job in being fair on this, including interviewing examples of responsible gun owners and carriers, providing examples of successful self-defense, and showing a firearm is not a magical talisman that makes bad people go away. He also cites the FBI's Uniform Crime Report which is as close to an unbiased source of statistics as you'll likely find on this topic. See the data for yourself:
https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend
The UCR shows this has been the trend since the early 1990s, reaching historic lows in 2014 and remaining close to that ever since.
There is no correlation between homicide and gun ownership. Tools don’t do anything by themselves and their presence can not make you more or less safe. BJ Campbell has a good article on this that thoroughly looks at the numbers of gun ownership and homicide rates per capita of numerous countries and analyzes how a series of less-thorough reports got this wrong.
Everybody’s Lying About the Link Between Gun Ownership and Homicide
There is no clear correlation whatsoever between gun ownership rate and gun homicide rate. Not within the USA. Not regionally. Not internationally. Not among peaceful societies. Not among violent ones. Gun ownership doesn’t make us safer. It doesn’t make us less safe. A bivariate correlation simply isn’t there. It is blatantly not-there. It is so tremendously not-there that the “not-there-ness” of it alone should be a huge news story.
Gun Murder Rate is not correlated with firearm ownership rate in the United States, on a state by state basis. Firearm Homicide Rate is not correlated with guns per capita globally. It’s not correlated with guns per capita among peaceful countries, nor among violent countries, nor among European countries.
I've heard it stated that it isn't fair to compare the United States to countries that aren't as well developed and/or are poorer. I'd argue that the "unfairness" of including a multitude of countries with varying Gross Domestic and National Products demonstrates that the real issues at hand are much more complex than the simplistic view of "less guns=less crime." One possible translation of this is, "It isn't fair to compare the United States to countries that demonstrate that the real issue with violence is a variety of socioeconomic issues; only use those examples that fit my narrative."