Oct. 25, 2023 - Epoch Times
11:01
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| Good evening, and right before we dive into the main story, I'll quickly mention once again that if you are just sick and tired of all the censorship on this platform, as well as the majority of the other platforms out there, and if you're looking for a source of actual honest news and analysis, well, consider checking out The Epoch Times. | |
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| Now, diving into today's main topic, four days ago, there was a major development in the ongoing battle over the Second Amendment, with a federal judge officially striking down California's gun ban. | |
| Specifically, the U.S. federal court ruled that California's ban on certain types of semi-automatic rifles, what they refer to as so-called assault weapons, is unconstitutional in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent clarification on the Second Amendment. | |
| And the details on this particular case out in California, they reveal an underlying battle that's being waged right now in courtrooms across the whole country, wherein you have American citizens using a Supreme Court decision which came down just last year to try and claw back some of the gun rights that have been stripped away from us over the past 100 wherein you have American citizens using a Supreme Court decision which | |
| However, in order to explain what happened in this particular case, as well as what it means going forward for both California as well as the nation, well, let's back up for a quick moment and start at the very beginning, right after you take a super quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons, which will quite literally force the YouTube algorithm to share this video out, as well as this information out, which will quite literally force the YouTube algorithm to share this video out, as | |
| Now, to start with, the U.S. Supreme Court decision which started all of this was the famous Bruin case, which, just for your reference, was the first gun rights-related case to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in well over a decade. | |
| Let me give you a brief refresher on what that particular case was all about. | |
| You see, up until last year, if you happen to be a resident of New York, well, it was almost impossible to get a concealed carry permit. | |
| That's because the state of New York has been, for the past 111 years now, forcing people to prove that they had a quote-unquote special need for self-protection. | |
| The relevant statute in New York was the Sullivan Act of 1911. | |
| And that particular law, it made it such that concealed carry permits, they can be issued at the sole discretion of local law enforcement. | |
| And in order for a common citizen to obtain one of these permits, he or she must quote, "demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community or of persons engaged in the same profession." Meaning that only if the local police agreed that you had a special need for self-protection would you be given a license to conceal carry a gun outside your home. | |
| And proving that you had a special need was not easy. | |
| It didn't matter whether you lived in a high-crime area or if you were the victim of, let's say, a robbery multiple times in the past. | |
| Well, it didn't matter. | |
| Unless you were an actual celebrity or you were some type of licensed security guard, you were just out of luck. | |
| It was nearly impossible to get a concealed carry permit in New York. | |
| Now, eventually, in 2018, the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, they filed a lawsuit against the superintendent of the New York State Police Force, arguing that the gun laws that were on the books for the past 111 years now were actually all along unconstitutional. | |
| And after several years of legal back and forth, the case finally wound up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, where? | |
| The conservative majority on the court, they ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. | |
| Specifically, in a 6-3 decision, Justices Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, they all ruled that New York's law was indeed unconstitutional and that the ability for a person to carry a pistol outside of the home was a constitutional right protected under the Second Amendment. | |
| Furthermore, in this decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that, And so for one, means testing was done away with. | |
| But then also, in the majority opinion of the court, which for your reference was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, there was a sentence which opened the door for other gun-restricting laws to be rolled back across the whole country. | |
| Here is specifically what Clarence Thomas wrote, again, in the majority opinion of the court. | |
| The burden falls on the defendants, meaning the government, to show that New York's proper cause requirement is consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. | |
| Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them. | |
| With these principles in mind, the court concludes that respondents have failed to meet their burden to identify an American tradition justifying New York's proper cause requirement. | |
| And so, with this opinion statement, Clarence Thomas, as well as the court in general, established a new legal precedent. | |
| Moving forward, whether it's federal, state, or local government, they will have to prove that their restrictive gun laws are, quote, consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. | |
| And if they can't, it means that, indeed, the law is unconstitutional. | |
| And so, with this new decision, as well as with this new legal standard that was established by the U.S. Supreme Court, the door was essentially flung wide open for Americans to begin challenging restrictive gun laws across the whole country in the hope of having them overturned. | |
| And indeed, that is exactly what began to happen. | |
| Lawsuits began to spring up across the entirety of the nation. | |
| Which brings us neatly along to the case over in California. | |
| Because you see, since the year 1989, California has been the place with some of the most stringent laws on the books regulating the types of guns that citizens are allowed to own. | |
| Specifically, the Roberti Rus' Assault Weapons Control Act was signed into law by the then-Republican Governor of California back in 1989. | |
| And this particular law, it was the first in the whole nation to ban the ownership and the transfer of specific models of guns that were categorized by the law as quote-unquote assault weapons. | |
| And while previous attempts to challenge this particular law have failed over the past 30-plus years, well, the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Bruin decision, it opened the door for gun rights advocates to actually overturn this piece of legislation. | |
| And so indeed, a man by the name of James Miller, who was a board member of the San Diego County Gun Owners Organization, he filed a lawsuit against the California Attorney General arguing, among other things, that the definition of assault weapon was politically motivated, and that it prevents law-abiding citizens from possessing or using firearms for self-defense, for hunting, as well as for other legal purposes. | |
| Now, this case bounced around the court system for approximately four years before getting to last Friday, wherein a federal judge ruled that California's quote-unquote assault weapons ban was indeed unconstitutional. | |
| Judge Roger Benitez, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, he wrote in his decision that the California law ignored previous rulings which made it clear that American citizens do indeed have the right to decide which firearms they can select for self-defense. | |
| He was specifically part of what he wrote. | |
| And, by the way, just for your reference, in this opinion of his, when he references Heller, that refers to another Supreme Court decision out of Washington, D.C., which found that the Second Amendment does, in fact, grant individual citizens the right to bear arms, not just organized militias. | |
| That case was called Heller v. | |
| District of Columbia. | |
| That's what he's referencing here. | |
| And so the opinion reads, Essentially, | |
| the judge was pointing out in this decision that the rifles which were banned use the same ammunition, they perform the same functions, and they even fire at the very same rate as rifles that aren't banned, and that the lawmakers selected the rifles to be banned based solely on the rifle's appearance. | |
| It looked like an assault weapon, and therefore it was. | |
| And so, using this rationale, the judge issued a permanent injunction on the enforcement of this California law, meaning in plain English that the law against assault weapons is no longer enforceable. | |
| Now, as you can imagine, gun rights groups celebrated this ruling as a victory, even though they acknowledged that the fight over in California is far from over. | |
| For instance, here was what the Second Amendment Foundation, which actually became a party to this lawsuit, here's what they said in a released statement. | |
| Quote, Federal Judge Roger C. Benitez's ruling will almost certainly be appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. | |
| But for the moment, the Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in the lawsuit are celebrating a victory. | |
| Judge Benitez has once again affirmed what we have argued since the beginning of this case. | |
| California's ban on so-called assault weapons is, and always has been, unconstitutional. | |
| However, on the flip side, you have California Governor Gavin Newsom releasing a statement of his own following this decision, in which, among other things, he called for a new constitutional amendment to ban so-called assault weapons. | |
| Here's what he said. | |
| Quote, And as such, the state is very likely to appeal this decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. | |
| And so we'll have to wait until that happens to see what ultimately happens in this case. | |
| As soon as that appeal comes through, I'll give you an update one way or the other. | |
| Until then, if you'd like to go through the details specifically in this case in greater depth, I'll throw all my research notes down into the description box below this video for you to peruse at your own leisure. | |
| And then lastly, as I mentioned at the top of the episode as well, if you are indeed sick and tired of all the censorship on this platform, with or without the federal government's involvement, well, you're in luck. | |
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