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I agree with you that blue states and jurisdictions continue to try their hardest to gum up the works, I cited several examples in my last paragraph. Do you think any solution is possible?
For me I think the problem is that none of the conservatives on the court really wants unrestricted firearm ownership. Obergefell's ruling is very simply stated: you cannot deny marriage to gay couples. In contrast there is no similarly bright line rule applicable to 2A. Bruen still requires a meandering and torturous analysis about finding historical analogues and then squinting to determine if it's close enough. On top of that the opinion is littered with arbitrary exceptions about "sensitive places", and while Bruen mostly dodged the question about felon-in-possession, other courts seized upon the Heller language about "law-abiding citizens" to imply that felon-in-possession laws are still valid.
You could issue a ruling that just says "No one can ever be prohibited from possessing a firearm" and "No places can ever prohibit possessing a firearm" and that wouldn't have any ambiguity at all. Except there's no appetite for allowing criminals the right to open-carry in courtrooms, and so we're stuck with this twisted flowchart instead.
I think it depends a bit on what you call a 'solution'. I don't think (and don't think it would even be 'fair') were Heller or Bruen to result in completely unrestricted firearm ownership. Obergefell lead to Bostock, but it wasn't written in stone the day Obergefell was announced. Hell, there are a lot of restrictions that I think are legitimately within the range of political discussion.
On the other hand, I think these cases absolutely, by central holding and by dicta, prohibit arbitrary restrictions on bare possession or carry of firearms in public places, respectively -- there's a reason so much lower court massive resistance depends on and actively cites the dissents. Yes, there might be some quibbling about how much Bruen breaks out 'sensitive places', but we're not just (or even mostly!) seeing examples close to "sensitive places such as schools and government buildings", but rather ones close to New York City's argument of all “places where people typically congregate and where law-enforcement and other public-safety professionals are presumptively available” that Bruen explicitly rejected. Several areas have done so to hilariously aggressive extents, or required ridiculous fees (sometimes while violating state law!), or with longer-than-year delays, or required a permit per gun (sometimes with total limits), or a thousand similar things. There have even been many restrictions that violate other constitutional principles.
Which... I don't expect people to play nice. I'd have more respect if these jurisdictions weren't making these rules, or heavily anti-gun judges were treating Bruen even by its own strict text, but we have seen several decades of people doing (if slightly more measured) futzing around at the edges for matters like free speech zones or abortion restrictions or gerrymandering cases.
But we've also seen a few dozen cases of people doing those matters and getting slapped down near-instantly, and in many cases the more extreme the gamesmanship or the more overt the intent to defy SCOTUS (or just appeals courts!) the more courts have been willing to step in early and given other expansive rulings. There are some exceptions -- the Texas SB8 law was very much made so that it would require a massive break from normal processes to make an early ruling, even compared to typical interventions -- but for the most part they are exceptions.
By contrast, that doesn't seem to have happened almost anywhere, here or in a number of Red Tribe matters. Several laws on matters of age restrictions or permit delays or gun violence restraining orders have been constructed such that they can not possibly be heard to even appeals level, nevermind SCOTUS, which should drive Robert's supposed anti-gamesmanship instincts up the wall, and there are several well-established exceptions (some, like those that apply for GVROs, which are favored)... and they haven't. In some cases, even as SCOTUS was the last resort before final closure of a case. We don't see much progress by the shadow docket, by the limited available interlocutory appeals, or what have you, nor were any nearby case to Bruen summarily reversed.
Some of that's principles. I'm glad, for example, that Thomas has not suddenly developed a strong lust for national preliminary injunctions.
But a lot of it's pretty clearly not. I don't think this points to SCOTUS being hesitant about a clear standard giving convicted felons concealed carry permits, in no small part because this issue is present in extremely constrained cases. My guess is that Roberts, at minimum, is highly aware of what could charitably be called the "dignity of the court", and more realistically be called the New York Times cocktail circuit, and he and at least a couple others are intensely aware that even the most minimal and sanely-uncontroversial decisions they sign on would become A Cause Celebre.
Thomas's "text, history, and tradition test" (and Kavanaugh before his appointment, and VanDyke and Butamay had pushed it as well pre-Bruen) can be seen within that framework. Not that they're surprised (maybe disappointed) that anti-gun states have been willing to lunge to and swallow the most racist and sexist and otherwise bigoted laws, or even that lower courts will condone them doing so, but when the case goes up, there'll at least be a Scylla to the Charybdis.
But I'm not as optimistic as you are on that. I've been wrong before, as Bruen itself evidences; maybe as we get away from the COVID years and as lower courts have some percolating information, they'll come down like a sack of hammers. Yet instead we're seeing fewer cases with cert granted, not more. Nor has this particular sea monster lead to awful publicity and meaningful impact in the past, as evidenced by how long after the yearbook drop that Governor We-Still-Don't-Know-If-It's-Blackface-or-KKK-Hoods lasted without any serious challenges from the left because of it.
Excellent pushback as always! There is indeed active belligerent resistance. The reason I am still hopeful is that prohibitions like the felon-in-possession were treated as sacrosanct for decades and had virtually no judges willing to even entertain the notion. I know the bar is low but the fact that the edifice is being chipped away even for bad optics cases like someone subject to a DVRO is groundbreaking stuff. I would have never predicted that to be on the table a few years ago.
What you're missing is the DVRO case is not the edifice being chipped away. It's an invitation for higher courts to reverse or limit Bruen. The idea being that you start from the position that any decision that allows nasty defendants like this one to win must be wrong; therefore, some limit must be found to Bruen which makes it wrong.
Maybe! I don't know what the future holds or why SCOTUS decided to take this case so quickly after Bruen. If the goal of the pro-gun Justices was to strike down the DVRO ruling, it highlights the absence of a coherent position on this issue. I'm against categorical prohibitions (like banning all felons from possessing a gun, no matter how old or non-violent their charge is) but open to individualized prohibitions (like disarming someone experiencing psychosis) and this would actually be in accord with some early history of gun prohibition in this country. I'm not sure the pro-gun Justices are willing to bite the bullet on this one, so I won't be surprised with future 2A rulings that are the equivalent of "guns are a right, but not like that!"
It's very suggestive that they took Rahimi, which went pro-gun, rather than any of the various cases where the lower courts have been foot-dragging. IMO, it signals they're going to backpedal.
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The solution will be that the anti-gunners gain control of the Supreme Court and interpret the 2nd amendment into oblivion, and the lower courts (including more pro-gun ones) fall into line. Everything until then is just a holding action.
The reason the only thing with a chance of working is "no restrictions period" (and even then it might not work) is because the other branches of government and many of the lower courts do not accept the authority of the Supreme Court on this issue. And the Supreme Court is either unwilling or unable to do anything to make them fall in line. Possibly, as you suggest, because these conservatives don't actually want people to have gun rights -- rather, they want the moral victory, the situation "Of course you have a right to keep and bear arms, but you can't have a GUN". Much as we've sometimes seen "you have free speech, but free speech doesn't mean you can say THAT" (first from conservatives and later from progressives).
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