Thread by @StephenGutowski

Here's a critique of Benitez's ruling from an Everytown official that's actually possible to have a discussion about. I'm sure many won't agree with it but it at least engages the text of the decision as well as the text of Heller and Miller.

https://twitter.com/MarkFrassetto/status/1401381034059567113

I think the dancing around Miller is pretty awkward, honestly. Miller was a pretty week opinion in a barely-litigated case with zero analysis of what the Second Amendment actually protects. Heller didn't need to overturn it to get where it was going so it didn't.

I've always thought Heller made a lot of compromises to get 5 votes and is more symbolic than anything. Setting the precedent that the Second Amendment at least means something was big after a 20th Century orthodoxy that declared it pointless.

But all it really says is law-abiding Americans have a right to own a handgun in their own home for self-defense. That's it. And there were very few places that tried to outlaw that by 2008. Heller didn't even set any real test for how lower courts should handle gun cases.

Lower courts filed in the lack of a test with their own balancing tests that mostly sided with governments. 13-years later gun-rights activists are still hoping the Supreme Court will set an explicit standard for judging gun cases. That's the bigger goal in the New York case.