The Supreme Court Lets California Restrict Guns in Public

The Supreme Court turned down another challenge to a gun control law, this time a California law that restricts carrying guns in public. 

This has a lot of people scratching their heads:

As is their custom, the justices gave no reasons for deciding not to hear the case. The court has turned away numerous Second Amendment cases in recent years, to the frustration of gun rights groups and some conservative justices.

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented. The court’s refusal to hear the case, Justice Thomas wrote, “reflects a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right.”

In 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep guns at home for self-defense.

Some of the laws the Court has let stand appear to be contradictory:

The question has divided the lower courts. The federal appeals court in Chicago struck down an Illinois law that banned carrying guns in public, while federal appeals courts in New York, Philadelphia and Richmond, Va., upheld laws that placed limits on permits to carry guns outside the home. The Supreme Court turned away appeals in all three cases.

Here's an idea: perhaps the court realizes that not all locales should have the same gun laws: New York City has little in common with Cheyenne, Wyoming. Those two cities don't have the same population density, levels of wealth and poverty, types of land use, wildlife, industry, and on and on.

Over the last few years conservatives have been insisting that Roe vs. Wade was evil because the federal government usurped the right of states to make their own abortion laws.

So why do they believe the federal government should be able to jam the same gun control laws down the throats of every state?

Every right guaranteed in the Constitution is subject to conditions and exceptions. Felons don't have the right to vote or carry guns. Pedophiles don't have the right to associate with children. States can control your freedom of movement by setting speed limits.

The Second Amendment is no different, especially considering the weird "well-regulated militia" preamble that it has. We can also get a sense of what the Framers were thinking by looking at the several forms it went through before it was finalized in 1789. Most of the versions implied that "the militia" was an organized army of citizens, as implied by the final (rejected) amendment to change the wording to "bear arms for the common defence."

I suspect that the Framers simply could not agree on whether they really wanted to let every moron carry a gun, and rather than bicker endlessly about it, they decided to make the amendment as short as possible and let future generations sort it out.

Which is what we're doing now.