Thread by @trgray14

Michigan v. Sitz

A thread on how I believe we can curb gun violence and the prevalence of guns in America. HINT: sobriety checkpoints. #Uvalde #SandyHook #SandyHookPromise

1/25

About 21,000. That’s the number of gun-related deaths/year it is going to take before Americans find the cultural & political backbone to “do something.” About 21,000 people were killed in the United States in 2020 in a gun homicide, unintentional shooting, or by police.

2/25

So it seems we’ve reach the essential threshold, especially if you add the 24,000 Americans who ended their lives by gun in 2020.

Why 21,000? Because in 1982 about 21,000 Americans were killed in drunk driving accidents.

3/25

By 1983 individual states, and later the Federal government, began facing the kind of political pressure required to “do something.” Americans had apparently had enough of drunk drivers and the damage they inflict on society.

4/25

Sobriety checkpoints became one tactic states began using to combat drunk driving, and in my opinion the constitutionality of sobriety checkpoints is now the key to reducing gun fatalities.

5/25

The 1990 SCOTUS case Michigan v. Sitz established the constitutionality of sobriety checkpoints, despite the fact they violated a citizen’s Fourth Amendment right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

6/25

In a 6-3 decision, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court held that, “…the balance of the State’s interest in preventing drunken driving, the extent to which {sobriety checkpoints} can reasonably be said to advance that interest, and the degree of intrusion...

7/25

...upon individual motorists who are briefly stopped, weighs in favor of the state program.” The Court conceded that sobriety checkpoints amounted to a “seizure” in the context of the Fourth Amendment, but determined they were constitutional since...

8/25

...states had a compelling interest for conducting them & they were minimally invasive. Even if they were only slightly effective at curbing drunk driving, the Court ruled sobriety checkpoints constitutional since the problem of drunk driving was so pervasive & injurious.

9/25

Conservatives are warned to keep in mind that’s their darling, Antonin Scalia, the noted proponent of “textualism”, joining in the majority opinion. The same Antonin Scalia who would later write about warrantless DNA collection...

10/25

...“The Fourth Amendment forbids searching a person for evidence of a crime when there is no basis for believing the person is guilty of the crime or is in possession of incriminating evidence...

11/25

...That prohibition is categorical and without exception; it lies at the very heart of the Fourth Amendment.”

Read through the Court’s majority opinion in Sitz and in context replace every reference to “drunk driving” with “gun fatalities”.

12/25

Replace every “sobriety checkpoint” with the name of any particular gun restriction. Finally, replace “individual motorists” with “gun owners”. Do you see how the Court could be convinced to make a similar decision on appropriate gun legislation?

12a/25
triskaidekaphobia

Right about now I imagine many gun owners or defenders of the Second Amendment are shaking their heads as they read this and mumbling words to the effect of, “driving is a privilege, not a right enshrined in the Constitution like gun ownership.”

14/25

NOWHERE in the Sitz decision does SCOTUS make a distinction about the privilege of driving, not even in the dissenting opinions. In Sitz SCOTUS only considered the merits of sobriety checkpoints versus the Fourth Amendment, and ruled IN FAVOR of sobriety checkpoints.

15/25

The idea that sobriety checkpoints were stopping motorists exercising their driving privileges on a public road wasn’t even relevant enough for mention.

16/25

I actually don’t support the decision in Sitz: I don’t believe “the balance of the State’s interest in preventing drunken driving” and the extent to which sobriety checkpoints advance that interest, are in equipoise as the court might say.

17/25

I would have agreed with Justice Stevens’ dissent when he said, “The most disturbing aspect of the Court’s decision today is that it appears to give no weight to the citizen’s interest in freedom from suspicionless (sic) unannounced investigatory seizures.”

18/25

Nonetheless sobriety checkpoints, an intrusion we almost take for granted today, are constitutional - a fact that may never change.

I also don’t support limitless access to guns, nor do I support access to guns for everyone. In that way I am just like 80-90% of Americans.

19/25

I support the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment and I support the rights of citizens to own guns, but I support those two things within reason.

I’m not advocating change for change’s sake.

20/25

The gun-control issue is complicated and the solutions to our current epidemic of gun violence must be wide-ranging and creative. The influence of the NRA is ridiculous when its membership numbers are considered in the context of our entire population.

21/25

The issue of who has access to guns is problematic. Our failure to confront the mental health issues at the heart of many problems, not just gun violence, must be acknowledged and addressed.

22/25

It’s embarrassing that there are fewer hurdles to privately buying and selling a gun than there are to buying/selling a car.

23/25

But proponents of stricter gun laws should take heart, and gun owners and defenders of the Second Amendment should be warned: it is not a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’ the American people will have had enough of gun violence.

24/25

When that day comes I believe SCOTUS can be swayed to support almost any reasonable restriction on access to guns based on the precedent set in Michigan v. Sitz.

The only question now is how many gun deaths per year it will take, and the answer appears to be about 21,000.

25/25

@threadreaderapp unroll please