“Conservative.”

The US supreme court has opened the door for almost all law-abiding Americans to carry concealed and loaded handguns in public, after the conservative majority struck down a New York law that placed strict restrictions on firearms outside the home.

That’s not conservative – it’s reckless, it’s homicidal, it’s dangerous. It’s labeled “conservative” only because lefties have better sense about it than righties do.

The New York law struck down on Thursday required anyone wanting to carry a handgun in public to prove that they had a “proper cause” to do so.

…

The decision in the case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen renders the law an unconstitutional violation of the second amendment right to bear arms.

It has profound implications for the safety and conduct of up to 83 million people in New York and seven other states plus Washington DC which have similar “proper cause” laws. They include heavily populated states, such as California and New Jersey, which account for roughly three out of every four Americans.

Don’t need no proper cause. It’s an ABSOLUTE HUMAN RIGHT to be able to kill someone at any moment.

The New York case was brought to the court after two men sued the state. Under the “proper cause” law, the men could secure unlimited permission to carry concealed guns in public only if they could demonstrate a special need for self-protection.

Lawyers argued that carrying a firearm outside the home was a “fundamental constitutional right. It is not some extraordinary action that requires an extraordinary demonstration of need.”

Yes it is some extraordinary action. It makes it easy to kill people in a matter of seconds. It’s very extraordinary.

Brian Frosh, the attorney general of Maryland, said the ruling would cause “more deaths and more pain in a country already awash in gun violence”.

“If the norm is that people can carry firearms, our neighbourhoods, our streets and other public places will become more dangerous. It will make the lives of law enforcement more difficult and more perilous. The epidemic of gun violence sweeping our nation demonstrates daily the folly of introducing more guns into this boiling cauldron.”

A genuinely conservative Supreme Court would worry about that. It would worry about what this country looks like to other countries. It’s a conservative value to heed what others think of us, and take it seriously, and perhaps act accordingly. It can be an annoying conformist conservative value but it can also be a good corrective. Genuine conservatives wouldn’t want to look like bloodthirsty violent lunatics on the world stage, but that’s exactly what the US looks like to the rest of the world.