Supreme Court’s pro-Second Amendment ruling fuels gun rights groups to target bans, age limits

 Second Amendment activists, armed with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the right to carry firearms for self-defense, are rushing to lower courts to challenge laws including age restrictions on handgun purchases and bans on some types of firearms.

Targets include laws that existed before last month’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen and laws that Democratic-led states have rushed to enact in the wake of the 6-3 decision, which shot down New York’s restrictions on issuing concealed-carry permits.

“This is just the beginning of what is likely to be a tsunami of litigation commenced by gun-rights-oriented plaintiffs,” said Mark W. Smith, a Second Amendment expert and a scholar at the Ave Maria School of Law.

“Just as Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark moment in dismantling the Jim Crow regime of ‘separate but equal’ and in the ensuring of equal rights, so too is Bruen a landmark case that will pave the way for a fuller vindication of our civil rights under the Second Amendment,” Mr. Smith said.

It’s easy to see why gun rights supporters are excited.

The court wiped away New York’s law and laws in five other states that put conditions on concealed-weapons permits. Activists expect a rush of gun owners to apply for permits.

Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion served as a legal lecture, telling judges to start taking the high court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence seriously.

He said the test courts must determine whether a firearm restriction would have seemed reasonable to the founding generation that crafted and ratified the Second Amendment. If not, he wrote, then the law must give way to the Constitution.

Justice Thomas said lower courts invented a two-part test that looked at the history and then balanced it against states’ reasons for enacting buying bans.

“Despite the popularity of this two-step approach, it is one step too many,” he said...MORE

You can read the opinion here.