The Second Amendment and The Good Ol' Days
— Sidney Secular —
The Big Beautiful Bill as passed included a provision that repealed requiring law-abiding US citizens to pay a $200 fee and then wait for perhaps months for permission to buy and install hearing protection devices on their firearms. As hearing protection is an important part of shooting safety, noise suppression devices are hardly novel or new. They are as old as car mufflers and millions of American gun owners already have them installed on their guns.
In a no-nonsense opinion, SCOTUS handed Mexico and US gun control fanatics a stinging rebuke, ruling 9-0 that their lawsuit, Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, failed to make a valid legal claim that gun manufacturers aided and abetted illegal arms trafficking in Mexico by manufacturing and selling those weapons to Mexicans. The opinion was written by the usually ultra-liberal Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee and hardly a gun aficionado! Justice Kagan’s opinion gave her a chance to show that she had the actual bonafides to make such a bonafide Supreme Court decision. The plaintiffs attempted to “stiff” the Protection of Commerce in Arms Act but instead created a precedent that could shoot down future bogus efforts to circumvent Congress’ intent in passing that law. Mexico had faulted the gun manufacturers for producing so-called “military style” assault weapons. but those weapons “are both widely legal and bought by many ordinary customers,” the Court determined.
SCOTUS also recently declined to take up a pair of major Second Amendment cases brought up by the States of Maryland and Rhode Island. In the Maryland case, the Court upheld the right to sell and possess several common semi-automatic rifles including the popular AR-15 within that State. In the Rhode Island case, the court declined to hear challenges to unconstitutional bans on popular firearms and standard capacity magazines in the “blue” states of California, Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington, a decision that was intended to restore Second Amendment rights to law-abiding Americans.
In another crucial decision, Citigroup has issued a press release declaring it is reversing its policy of discriminating against gun manufacturers as well as stores with federal arms licenses and other firearms-related businesses. Not every attack on the Second Amendment arises in the courts!
Yes, guns are common, but not as yet “traditional” in the former sense. However, matters are starting to turn around, perhaps returning to the way things used to be in the days of our grandfathers. Back then, Sears would have a gun department, catalogs that listed guns and Christmas ads in magazines -- including kids’ magazines – that extolled .22 rifles or .410 shotguns as suitable gifts for boys and girls – not to mention the always popular bb gun. Sometimes the ads pictured entire families displaying the new guns around the Christmas tree. High schools had rifle teams, even in New York City. Many of the City’s public high schools had shooting clubs and a few even had gun ranges on their premises. Elsewhere, high schoolers would hunt on the way to and from school, storing their guns in their school lockers. Pickup trucks in high school parking lots had gun racks, sometimes with rifles or shotguns plainly visible. Summer camps and Boy Scout troops usually taught the proper use of handguns and rifles. None of this was controversial. The “gun culture’ was just another part of the general culture as it had been for two centuries as illustrated by the monuments to America’s revolutionary “Minutemen.”
Nowadays, despite attacks – political and cultural – from the far left, guns remain common while the gun culture booms in response to increased violence in the culture. Increasingly, schools have shooting teams again as do the Scouts; and even lefties are buying guns for self-defense, quietly, of course. But still, guns are treated as political statements by some while others keep them in secret, afraid what friends or neighbors might say.