No matter which side of the gun debate you are on, it's hard to deny that something has changed in the gun debate. The events of Sandy Hook have not so much changed the debate as woken up the silent majority of Americans who had never felt strongly about the gun debate, and the country has discovered it is a lot more pro-gun control than previously thought. I believe this goes back to something I said in another thread about the Great Shift Left that I believe we are witnessing. One day we might look upon this as the era of the Three G's: Gay marriage, Ganja, and Gun control.
Understand, I don't believe we are going to see the right to keep and bear arms revoked. Guns will remain a fact of life for many, many people across the country. Gun culture will continue unabated. But I think we are going to see more restrictions on buying guns, including universal background checks and better tracking of sales. And I think we will see restrictions on carrying guns in public.
This is important. The Supreme Court is considering hearing a case that challenges a law restricting who can carry firearms in public. Many states have such laws. If the SCOTUS upholds them, it would open the floodgates for states and municipalities to place greater and greater restrictions on guns in public. On the other hand, if the Supremes shoot down the state law, any and all such laws would become null and void. That would be a major victory for the gun-rights crowd. In fact it would all but cripple gun control efforts.
With this Court there is simply no way to guess how they might rule on this matter, and they are only at the point of considering it, so it wouldn't be until the next session that they could even hear it, so a ruling is not in the offing until at least June of 2014. But I believe the members of this Court are keenly aware that the eyes of history are upon them. A lot of major social issues, all of the Three G's in fact, are either currently before them or set to come before them soon. In a perfect world, political considerations and one's place in history would not enter into a justice's deliberations. And for the most part I think they do not. But they are human, it is only natural to think about such things. And at their level, the final court of appeal, they must surely take into consideration such factors as societal and cultural norms. It is not unusual for justices to become more "liberal" the longer they serve. And many conservative appointees (such as Earl Warren himself) proved to far more liberal than their political patrons liked. Roberts shows signs of becoming just such a Chief Justice. Certainly his ruling in the Obamacare case did not endear him to the Right, which had once lauded him as the perfect example of the kind of jurist we need. Ah well.
The majority of Americans want stricter gun control. I have a feeling they're going to get it.