The fight for civil rights is never popular. If it was, there wouldn’t need to be a fight.
If the white people of Topeka had wanted black kids in their children’s schools, Brown wouldn’t have had to sue the Board of Education.
And if the Democrats who control New York had wanted their neighbors to have the Second Amendment protections enjoyed in 43 other states, the rifle and pistol association wouldn’t have had to sue the superintendent of state police.
But some people don’t respect the civil rights of others. Some don’t value other people’s freedom as much as they value their own. And some use the power of government to oppress the civil liberties of minorities.
Whether they be minorities of race, orientation, religion or political philosophy, intolerant elites will use majority animosity to subvert minority rights. And so, the fight for civil rights is always an unpopular minority raising its voice in an assertion of liberty.
That’s the case in New York.
In New York, where a minority of voters support Second Amendment rights, the political majority has repeatedly and chronically legislated and governed against the interests of gun owners. The right to keep and bear arms has been consistently assailed and restricted.
And it is a right, at least according to the Founders. The right to own and carry a gun – “keep and bear” – is specifically protected in the Constitution with its own amendment.
So effective has suppression of the Second Amendment been in New York that the conditions for its exercise in that state are very different from the conditions for its exercise in other states. That gets to the specific issue addressed by the Supreme Court.
In 43 states, carrying a concealed handgun for self-protection is an unquestioned right. There may be licensing and possession restrictions, but the basic right is respected and is operational. In New York, and five other Democrat states, that right is not recognized.
In fact, in New York, state law requires that a “proper cause” be shown before a license to carry a handgun is issued. That means that the state’s legal presumption is that New Yorkers do not have a right to be armed to defend themselves, but that exceptions may be allowed if individuals demonstrate that they are at special risk or have special need for protection.
The question before the Supreme Court was whether or not that was right.
And the question was asked because the New York law directly impinged on a Constitution-based civil right enjoyed by the residents of more than 80 percent of the states. The New York law made its residents lesser citizens by virtue of this oppression. The New York law denied its residents the “equal protection” of law – in regards to the Second Amendment – that is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
So a civil rights organization – the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association – sued the government in a First Amendment-protected petitioning of government for a redress of grievances. In America, when the government elites screw you out of your freedom, you’re allowed to call them on it.
That’s what this suit was about. And the Supreme Court decided that the Second Amendment meant what it said, and that there is a civil right to protect yourself, even with a gun and even outside your home. The Supreme Court decided that the state government’s law – even if popular – was unconstitutional, that it was an oppression of the rights of a minority of New Yorkers.
This isn’t a revolutionary change. For all but five states, it means nothing. Forty-three states already recognized and respected this right. The largest number of people freed by this ruling are in New York, where the rebuffed government is angry and vengeful.
The governor called the ruling “reprehensible,” and said it was a manifestation of the “insanity of the gun culture.” She also said, “It’s not what New Yorkers want.”
In this, she was echoing a long line of similar oppressors.
Bull Connor, another Democrat, didn’t like it when the Supreme Court protected the civil rights of his neighbors either.
And in generation after generation, as the ongoing quest to expand and perfect American freedom has gone forward, the advances have always pushed back against popular sentiment and enraged political elites empowered by oppression.
That’s what’s happening in New York. That’s why the governor and her party are so angry.
They are on the wrong side of freedom, and they are acting as such oppressors always act.