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Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Recent Victory in N.J.

 Koons v. PLATKIN (D.N.J. 2023):

In conclusion, the Second Amendment's "right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not a `second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.'" Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2156 (quoting McDonald, 561 U.S. at 780). That does not mean, however, that the right is "unlimited." Heller, 554 U.S. at 626. The Constitution leaves the States "some measures" to combat handgun violence. Id. at 636. But what the Second Amendment prohibits the States from doing, and what the State of New Jersey has done here with much of Chapter 131, is to "prevent[] law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms." Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2156. That is plainly unconstitutional.

Bruen required the State to bring its firearm laws in compliance with the Second Amendment. Chapter 131 was the State's response, but it went too far, becoming the kind of law that Founding Father Thomas Jefferson would have warned against since it "disarm[s] only those who are not inclined or determined to commit crimes [and] worsen[s] the plight of the assaulted, but improve[s] those of the assailants."[81]

The decision cites Clayton E. Cramer & David B. Kopel, "Shall issue": The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws, 62 Tenn. L. Rev. 679, 709 (1995) and Cramer, 16 J. on Firearms & Pub. Pol'y at 16-17. 

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