Tangle - SCOTUS appears set to expand gun rights.

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a challenge to a 108-year-old New York gun law that requires someone who wants to carry a concealed weapon for self-defense to show "proper cause" for doing so, and to apply for a special permit. The law is being challenged by the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association (NYSRPA), which says it is an overburdensome restriction on the Second Amendment.Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.You can support our podcast by clicking here.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about something that gets a lot of people really hysterical. Guns, gun rights, more specifically. And even more specific than that, gun rights right here in New York City, where I live. We're talking about the Supreme Court case,

New York State Rifle and Pistol Association versus Bruin. That is going to have some pretty big implications for everyone, not just in New York. As always, before we jump in, we're going to give you some quick hits, some news of the day. First up, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced charges against two hackers in connection to ransomware attacks that impacted thousands of businesses and extorted millions of dollars over the last year. Number two, former President Trump told the RNC chair he was planning to leave the GOP, according to a new book by ABC's Jonathan Karl. He would later back off the threat. Number three, Arizona Republican Paul Gosar is under fire after sharing a photoshopped anime video where he is murdering Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

and hurting President Joe Biden. Number four, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu announced he would run for re-election rather than run for Senate, as many Republicans had hoped he would. Number five, the January 6th House Committee issued subpoenas to six additional associates of former President Donald Trump. All right, that's it for our quick hits today, which brings us to our main story, guns. Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association versus Bruin, a challenge to a 108-year-old New York gun law that requires someone who wants to carry a concealed weapon for self-defense to show quote-unquote proper cause for doing so. These people must apply for a special permit in

New York to carry the weapon. The law is being challenged by the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, the NYSRPA, which says that it is an overburdensome restriction on the Second Amendment. During oral arguments in the case, a majority of the Supreme Court seemed sympathetic to the NYSRPA, indicating that they believe Americans generally have a right to carry a firearm outside the home. However, the justices also expressed concerns about the proliferation of handguns in crowded places in New York City, like on the subway or in Yankee Stadium or Times Square, and debated among themselves whether the right to carry could be regulated differently in urban and rural areas. Some history on this case. So the Second Amendment in its entirety reads,

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. In 1939, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in United States v. Miller that the obvious purpose of the Second Amendment was to make citizen militias possible, and because militias were by then an archaic idea, the ruling gave wide latitude to states to regulate gun ownership and laws. In 2008, however, SCOTUS ruled for the first time in a 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protected an individual's right to own a gun for self-defense. In that ruling, the court also said that the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited, allowing many states and localities to keep their power in limiting how many people can exercise their Second Amendment privileges.

Now, this case in New York could further minimize the ability of the government to restrict the Second Amendment. If the justices rule in favor of the NRS-PRA, which they seem poised to do, the critical question will be how broad or narrow their ruling is, whether it applies to just New York or, by extension, the six other states that also impose strict gun regulations, and then how it might affect gun legislation more broadly across the country. The ruling could have lasting effects on how guns are regulated in more densely populated areas in the United States and what legislators and citizens can and cannot regulate in terms of gun ownership. All right, so we're going to jump in with some arguments from the right and the left, and then my take. So the right is hoping SCOTUS strikes down the

statute, saying it is unconstitutional and is not protecting New Yorkers. In the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Halbrook said a constitutional right is not a right when you need approval to exercise it. In its brief to the Supreme Court in Bruin, New York justifies its denial of carry licenses on the basis that the applicants failed to show a, quote, non-speculative need for armed self-defense in all public places. That suggests that most of the people don't have a right to bear arms after all. It's a privilege to be doled out under government discretion, Hallberg argued. In Heller, which concerned the right to keep arms in the home, the court observed that laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places,

such as schools and government buildings, are presumptively valid. That implies that restrictions applicable in all public places aren't presumptively valid. New York next appeals to history and tradition, digging up the 1328 statute of Northampton, Hallberg said. But English courts interpreted the statute to prohibit persons from going armed in a fray of the peace, not if they were acting peaceably. America's founders would have scorned the idea that they needed the king's license to carry guns, a requirement that New York cites as if it's a part of the American heritage. In the New York Post, Nicole Gelinas said the justices

arguing showing they are woefully unfamiliar with the city. The court's newest member, Amy Coney Barrett, made the first rookie tourist mistake common enough to out-of-towners. When she thinks New York, she thinks Times Square, Gelinas said, referencing Barrett's comments that Times Square would probably need to be a gun-free zone. But wait, if Times Square is sensitive on a busy night, then so is much of the city much of the time. Rockefeller Center is about to get sensitive for two and a half months when the storied Christmas tree arrives. The Triborough and Brooklyn Bridges are sensitive landmarks, as is the Lincoln Tunnel.

If the point of this exercise is to rescue us from tyranny, it seems odd to delegate deciding what is sensitive to the government. Would the court be back in a year to hear whether Tompkins Square Halloween dog parade is sensitive, Gelinas asks? Sure, you can carry a New York, but not on a bridge, tunnel, subway, or bus, nor in or near a crowded avenue, square, park, college campus, or major public event or entertainment venue, nor in stores, restaurants, bars, or clubs. The beach is probably not looking so great either. Our potential newfound right to their arms may be boring and lonely. And in Breitbart, Mark W. Smith argued that New York should lose the Supreme Court case even on the public safety argument.

Why? Well, it comes down to the old saying, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Consider what will happen if the Supreme Court strikes down New York's restriction on public carry, Smith said. Who will end up securing carry licenses? Law-abiding citizens. Even if New York lifts its restriction, applicants for licenses to carry would presumably still need to satisfy eligibility requirements such as confirming that they are not felons, they are not mentally ill, and they do not use illegal drugs. New York's lawyers ought to be aware of the data showing that concealed carry license holders are extremely unlikely to commit crimes, Smith added. Data from the Crime Prevention Research Center, for example, indicates that while police commit

firearms violations at a rate of 16.5 per 100,000 officers. The rate for permit holders in Florida and Texas is just 1.4 for 100,000, with similar data in other states. Alright, that is it for what the right is saying, and this is what the left is saying. So the left hopes that SCOTUS makes a narrow ruling and that New York is still able to regulate the number of people who can carry concealed guns in public. In the New York Times, J. Michael Luttig, a former U.S. Court of Appeals judge and Richard D. Bernstein, an Appalachian lawyer, said that it would be a grave mistake to repeal New York's law. The court should affirm the constitutionality of New York's public carry statute and the other statutes nationwide that limit and restrict the public carry of handguns,

they wrote. The court has a newly reconstituted conservative majority who may want to expand Second Amendment rights and protections. But that would be a mistake in this case, because the framers of our Constitution intended the people and their democratically elected legislators to decide where and when to permit the carry of firearms in public, as they have done for centuries. The Supreme Court is not constitutionally empowered to make these decisions, and it is ill-suited to make them, they added. For the justices to begin deciding for the people exactly where and when a person has a right to carry a handgun in public would be to establish the court as essentially as a national review board for public carry regulations, precisely the kind of constitutional commandeering of the democratic process that conservatives and conservative jurists have long lamented in other areas of the law, such as abortion. It would be hypocritical for this conservative court to assume what essentially

would be a legislative oversight role over public carry rights when conservatives on and off the court have for almost 50 years roundly criticized the court for assuming that same role over abortion rights. In The Nation, Ellie Mistal said the Supreme Court is poised to give a major win to gun nuts. The notion that it violates the Second Amendment to require people to give a reason to carry a gun strikes me as ludicrous, particularly when that amendment states the reason to bear loaded weapons on New York City subways to protect themselves from the criminals he believes are stalking every passenger on the 7 train. It sounded a lot like the white fear that drenched the Bernard Goetz case. There doesn't appear to be a way to stop conservatives from doing this, however, Mistal said. There's no way to prevent them from unleashing trigger-happy vigilantes onto our streets and subways. That's because, at core, NYS rifle is about extending the warped logic of the 2008 case

District of Columbia v. Heller to its bloody yet logical conclusion. In Heller, the Supreme Court for the first time recognized a right to bear arms purely for personal self-defense. Heller was limited to self-defense inside the home, but if one accepts its logic, which I do not, it's difficult to argue that the new right to shoot things that go bump in the night can be limited to one's private domain. And if one agrees that there's a personal right to self-defense outside the home, well, this is how you get Rambo riding the subway. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond

Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. In MSNBC, Barbara McQuaid said New York would be at greater risk of gun violence, is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. of surprise, she wrote. For this reason, handguns are the weapon of choice in most mass shootings. In 81% of mass shootings in the United States over the past 12 years, at least one handgun was used, according to an Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund analysis. In 60% of mass shootings, only a handgun was used. Second, striking down New York's licensing requirement would permit terrorists to further exploit our already lax gun laws.

The FBI has assessed that America's abundance of guns makes us more vulnerable than other countries to terrorist attacks. All right, that brings us to my take. Okay, I'm going to try not to get in any trouble here. Well, that's not true. I'm going to tell you what I honestly think. So look, I've conceded before that my views on gun rights tend to be right of center in that I fundamentally see the need and use for them. I respect people's right to carry firearms, and I myself have enjoyed both living in gun-friendly states and shooting guns for sport. Legal, registered gun owners in America are overwhelmingly law-abiding, and they regularly use their firearms for self-defense without firing a shot. Brandishing a weapon or threatening the use of one is often enough, and whether you

like it or not, thanks to Heller, they now have both the Supreme Court precedent and enshrined Second Amendment rights at their backs in this case. Generally speaking, the public safety logic is not that hard to follow either. Armed criminals will be less enthusiastic about attacking citizens that could be armed versus citizens they know are sitting ducks. Whether the data supports that depends on where you're looking and for how long, but it's not as always simple as more guns means more dead people. Still, there are a lot of issues here. First, the fundamental argument that prospective gun owners are having their rights infringed here in New York City strains credulity. 65% of applicants for New York City's concealed permits receive them. The city's residents have not had gun restrictions imposed on them for a

century. They've supported gun restrictions for a century. The last time gun rights were a hot button issue here in the wake of the Parkland shooting, about 90% of New Yorkers said they wanted more restrictive gun control laws by expanding the background check waiting period. Another 85% said they wanted to ban domestic abusers from being able to get guns. This was not just in the ultra-liberal city, but statewide across New York. At the same time, let's keep in perspective the proliferation of guns nationwide and in New York. As of 2018, we had 120 firearms per 100 residents in this country. That's more than one gun for every adult, far more than any country on the planet. Yemen had 52 guns per 100 citizens

in second place as of 2018. Despite being 45th in gun ownership rate by state, nearly one in five New Yorkers shares a home with a gun. Even while expressing their support for curtailing the New York statute, the conservative justices in this case sort of made the opposition's point. First, they made it quite clear that their knowledge of New York was limited, arguing over whether NYU has an actual campus or not and supposing Times Square during New Year's Eve or a Yankees game are crowded enough to limit guns, as if they weren't during literally dozens of other similarly crowded events, places, and times during the year in New York City. This is New York City. Every day there are parades, concerts, marathons, and holiday celebrations. We have 11 professional sports teams, the World Trade Center, the Statue

of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Grand Central, Penn Station, Rockefeller Center, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Grand Central, Penn Station, Rockefeller Center, two of the 10 biggest libraries in America, 110 universities and colleges, and a whatever pride parade, insert nationality, sexuality, race, sports team of your choice, literally every week. It's the biggest, most populous, most diverse, most visited city in America. If the justices think a Yankees game is too much for a firearm, where exactly are they planning to allow people to take their guns? This is precisely why these laws exist in the first place. It wasn't just the justices shooting themselves in the foot either. Paul Clement, the lawyer representing NYSRPA, at one point argued that other cities already have laws

stating they shall issue concealed carry permits to any ordinary citizens, as opposed to New York, which asked for a cause to obtain a permit. Clement then cited the city of Chicago, which drew a reminder from liberal justice Elena Kagan that Chicago is a conservative punching bag, emblematic of democratic rule gone wrong for how overrun it is with crime and shootings, but now on the biggest stage, it was being cited as proof positive that looser gun laws could make New York City residents safer. It really doesn't make any sense. Of course, this is not an easy case. That's why it's at the Supreme Court. The natural outgrowth of the Heller ruling is that New Yorkers should have the right to carry a concealed firearm publicly, and everyone in the courtroom knows this. It's illustrative of the tension between

guaranteed rights, how those rights are limited by regulation over time, and what kind of power the federal government should have to simultaneously enforce rights while also reversing the will of the voters who supported limiting those rights in the first place. Liberals making this point now sound a lot like conservatives who often lean on states' rights and shun federal overreach when defending their ideological positions. Another everyday reminder that there is nuance everywhere and none of this is black and white. Regardless of my feelings, though, regardless of my feelings, though, the court looks poised to side with NYS RPA. How far they will go is the question.

As a New Yorker, my fervent hope is that they'll leave the door cracked open for voters and legislators, like me, to both limit guns in sensitive places and expand the number of such places, effectively keeping the number of guns in New York streets where it is now. We don't need more guns, more citizens with guns, or any more classic New York flare-ups turning into shootings. We need fewer guns, everywhere. Our right to firearms and our ability to protect ourselves from government tyranny should be protected, and they are. They're more than intact. They're flourishing right now. Those rights need to also be balanced with public safety and the will of the citizenry,

which has made it clear in New York City and elsewhere that a right to carry a sidearm onto the subway is not synonymous with the right to own one or form a militia. All right, that's it for my take. That brings us to the story that matters for today. So by a lot of traditional measures, the U.S. economy is doing well. Six million jobs were created between January and October. The average earnings are up 3.5% this year. Unemployment is just 4.6%, and stocks seem to be hitting new records every week. The market is up 30% year to date.

Yet the Gallup Economic Confidence Index is at negative 25. Basically, people think the economy sucks right now. Why? Inflation is rising and the price of gas is up 62% from last year, which probably has a bigger influence on how Americans are feeling than just about anything. At the same time, supply chain issues are creating a headache for the White House, which despite some of its strong numbers, can't seem to convince Americans things are going well. Axios has a great story we link to in the newsletter today about how traditional economic indicators are colliding with the rising cost of goods and American pessimism. You can find that link in the newsletter.

the newsletter. All right, we are skipping our reader question today because this newsletter got long just on the main topic. As always, if you want to ask a question to get answered in the podcast or in the newsletter, you can write to me, Isaac at readtangle.com. All right, so today's numbers section. First, we'll start with some numbers related to our main story. 8.3% is the percentage of Americans with a concealed carry permit. 32.1% is the concealed carry rate in Alabama, the highest of any state. 21.52 million is the number of concealed handguns registered in the U.S. 71% is the percentage of Americans who say local school boards are doing very good or somewhat good in balancing health and safety of students with other priorities. 68% is the percentage of Republicans who say that local school boards are doing very good or somewhat good in balancing health and safety of students with other priorities.

good or somewhat good in balancing health and safety of students with other priorities. 78% is the percentage of Democrats who say that local school boards are doing very good or somewhat good in balancing health and safety of students with other priorities. Pretty interesting. Just some numbers showing that most Americans, most adults seem to be pretty happy with how school boards are balancing public safety with students and the other priorities in school, which I thought was kind of surprising given some of the outrage and the things that happen in Virginia. So there you go. All right. That brings us to our have a nice day section. Okay. I'm going to concede by saying that I don't know if there's actually a good news story or not, but I just thought it was pretty

interesting. And like, there's this rebellious part of me that really liked it. I just read about this story in Portugal where remote workers just got a new labor law approved that makes it illegal for employers to contact workers outside of office hours. The laws won't apply to employers with fewer than 10 employees, but companies can now face fines for that kind of contact. Employers are also forbidden from monitoring their employees while they work at home. Again, this sounds like a huge win for workers. I love the idea of people getting to box their bosses out when they aren't on the clock. There's more to life than work.

I'd be curious though what my readers think. I mean, I read this and I'm like, yeah, screw the bosses. Like everybody should be able to do what they want. Seemed like a good news story to me, but I imagine there must be some kind of downside to this. So I don't know. If I have any readers in Portugal, listeners in Portugal especially, please write in, email me, let me know what you think. I'm very curious. All right, that's it for today's podcast. As always, if you'd like to support us, please go to readtangle.com, check out our membership offerings, or click that link that is in your podcast description and pledge to become a supporter of the podcast. Really appreciate it. And we'll see you guys tomorrow. Peace.

Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. Check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching! world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.