Supreme Court decisions are binding on lower courts and usually clarify the latest state of the law and how the law applies, mostly based on legal principles at issue.
Because a principle is being decided, declared, clarified often this will affect other laws that share the same principle related to a totally different law/issue. Which means one decision can have some unintended consequences in relation to other laws.
The movie “Amazing Grace” was about the end of the “legal” slave trade in Britain. The abolitionists got smart and decided to attack the law indirectly and got an apparently unrelated law passed which had the effect of making the slave trade unprofitable/impossible and that led to the making of the slave trade illegal because of the social pressure and loss of profitable slave trade made outlawing the slave trade inevitable.
This article below reports a new law regarding same sex marriage laws in the USA based on the principles laid out in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, of equality.
Legal observers have noted that if that interpretation in now law the same interpretation of the 14th Amendment NOW applies to other issues…the issue they focus on is “right to bear Arms” BUT there will be more laws that will be reviewed in light of this new decision and the principle of equality will now apply there too.
SCOTUS same-sex marriage decision may have just legalized the concealed carry of loaded firearms across all 50 states, nullifying gun laws everywhere
Monday, June 29, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) The legal argument of gay marriage proponents is that because gay marriage is legal in a majority of states, that “right” cannot be infringed by the remaining states which opposed gay marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court, in granting this new, nationwide right to gay marriage, cited the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, Section 1, which states:
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The actual ruling text of the SCOTUS decision makes it clear that its “equal protection” logic would apply universally to concealed carry gun rights which already exist in a majority of states:
(1) The fundamental liberties protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause extend to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices defining personal identity and beliefs… When new insight reveals discord between the Constitution’s central protections and a received legal stricture, a claim to liberty must be addressed. Applying these tenets, the Court has long held the right to marry is protected by the Constitution.
Similarly, the right to keep and bear arms has also long been protected by the Constitution and affirmed in multiple Supreme Court decisions, as early as last year. “In District of Columbia v Heller (2008) — the SCOTUS ruled that the 2nd Amendment rights were ‘fundamental’ in and of themselves as well as ‘fundamental to the Nation’s scheme of ordered liberty'” writes Hawkins at Breitbart.com.
If this right to keep and bear arms (and to carry concealed firearms) is already recognized in some states, then by the Supreme Court’s own precedent on gay marriage, that right cannot be denied in ANY state!
SCOTUS may have nullified gun control laws by legalizing gay marriage
The Supreme Court, in other words, appears to have just nullified gun control laws all across America.
As Bob Owens writes on BearingArms.com, “By using the Constitution in such a manner, the Court argues that the Due Process Clause extends ‘certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy’ accepted in a majority of states across the state lines of a handful of states that still banned the practice. The vast majority of states are ‘shall issue’ on the matter of issuing concealed carry permits, and enjoy reciprocity with a large number of other states.”
He continues:
I’ll be driving through the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York in several weeks, places that until yesterday I did not have a legal right to concealed carry. As of today, with this decision, it would seem that these states and the District must honor my concealed carry permit, or violate my constitutional rights under the 14th and Second Amendment.
AWR Hawkins, writing for Breitbart.com, adds:
When the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that every state must recognize same sex marriages, they used a basis for judgement that will not easily stop at same sex marriage. In fact, it is a basis for judgement that should offer itself to national reciprocity of concealed carry permits and permit holders.
“Equal protection” must now apply to all things, not just gay marriage
The fascinating part of the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage is that it sets a precedent of a principled interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment which must now be applied to everything.
The Supreme Court, in other words, just made the argument for nullifying most gun control laws across America. As explained again by Bob Owens in another article on BearingArms.com:
…[I]f there is any intellectual and logical consistency in the Supreme Court’s arguments at all, the ‘due process’ argument must be applied as equally to state and local gun laws, sweeping them aside entirely, and reaffirming the clear command in the Second Amendment that, ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’
All, state and local on concealed and open carry would seem to be invalidated, and citizens should be allowed to carry firearms, either openly or concealed, anywhere they want to go.
Dare the Court dare claim that the 14th Amendment’s due process clause only applies in specific and narrow instances?
That’s the thing about court decisions, you see: we can’t just pick and choose where they apply. A powerful new principle of “equal protection” must now be interpreted across all issues, not just the narrow issue of same-sex marriage.
As Marc Greendorfer explains in his amicus brief to the court:
One day, the Court will have to explain how sweeping restrictions on every aspect of firearms ownership and use can be upheld yet traditional and long-standing regulations on marriage cannot be tolerated in any form or in any jurisdiction.
In other words, if the Court is to have any logical consistency at all, it will have no choice but to declare nearly all gun control laws nationwide to be null and void, in precisely the same way it just declared all “marriage control” laws to be null and void. After all, “equal protection” must be equal, or it has no meaning at all (and the Supreme Court itself becomes a total joke).
That’s how freedom works: It’s not just freedom for YOUR favorite issues, but freedom for other issues, too
You can’t discriminate against people based on their personal beliefs, you see. So if gay couples’ right to be married must be universally recognized across all states, then gun owners’ right to carry firearms must also be universally recognized across all states. That’s the way freedom works: once a principle is affirmed and set into the history of interpretation of law, it must be applied universally.
I can already see the comedic bumper stickers from all this: IF YOU GET TO MARRY, WE GET TO CARRY!
In essence, the U.S. Supreme Court just handed the NRA the very argument it might now use to nullify gun restriction laws everywhere. The NRA merely needs to file suit in a lower court, cite the Obergefall decision, and kick the lawsuit all the way back up the chain to SCOTUS. There, the Court must decide in a manner consistent with the same-sex marriage “rights,” or else it will cease to carry any real authority at all.
The realization of all this, of course, will drive many of the same-sex marriage lobbyists absolutely insane. They did not see this unintended consequence of “equal protection” being applied to other topics. But that’s how equality actually works, isn’t it? Equality means the principle is equally applied to other contexts.
Gay gun rights advocates are no doubt thrilled with this realization
You might be surprised, by the way, to learn that there is a group of gay gun rights advocates who must now be double-thrilled to learn the implications of all this. The group is called the Pink Pistols, and this list of local chapters shows they have members all across the nation, from New York to Texas. Their slogan? “Armed gays don’t get bashed.” Gotta love it!
Anyone who believes in universal freedom, not selective freedom, should support both the rights of people to be gay as well as be armed for self defense. If you happen to both gay and armed, check out the Pink Pistols.
