The Supreme Court is considering taking on a moot gun case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, when it reconvenes in October. Now the NRA and Mitch McConnell—with every one of his Republican senators—are declaring war with Democrats and egging the court to take on what they're calling a "project," that project being a wholly politicized Supreme Court.
In January, the court listed the case on its docket, but since then the case has basically been dissolved. The city of New York had imposed stringent restrictions on the transportation of firearms, resulting in gun owners being prevented from taking unloaded weapons outside the city limits to firing ranges or their second homes within the state. This year, the city rescinded the regulations and the state legislature passed a law to prohibit their reinstatement. So, essentially, there is no case. Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, joined by Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut) Richard J. Durbin (Illinois) and Kirsten Gillibrand (New York), filed an amicus brief with the court, urging it to drop the case.
The Democrats didn't mince words, either, saying that the "Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it," and pointing out surveys that have demonstrated how politicized the court is viewed by the American people. Whitehouse issued a not-so-veiled and well-earned threat: "Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be 'restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics,'" he wrote, quoting a poll question that the majority of Americans answered positively.
"Out in the real world, Americans are murdered each day with firearms in classrooms or movie theaters or churches or city streets, and a generation of preschoolers is being trained in active-shooter survival drills," Whitehouse wrote in the brief. "In the cloistered confines of this Court, and notwithstanding the public imperatives of these massacres, the NRA and its allies brashly presume, in word and deed, that they have a friendly audience for their 'project.'" Whitehouse quotes the brief submitted by the NRA and petitioners: "Confident that a Court majority assures their success," he writes, "petitioners laid their cards on the table: 'The project this Court began in Heller and McDonald cannot end with those precedents,' petitioners submit." They are literally calling the actions of conservative justices on the Supreme Court to overturn gun safety laws their shared "project."
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To punctuate that, Whitehouse points out the investment the NRA has made in securing a friendly Supreme Court. "The lead petitioner’s parent organization, the National Rifle Association (NRA), promoted the confirmation (and perhaps selection) of nominees to this Court who, it believed, would 'break the tie' in Second Amendment cases. During last year's confirmation proceedings, the NRA spent $1.2 million on television advertisements declaring exactly that."
That the five Democratic senators had the temerity to point that out to the Court has McConnell and team enraged. All 53 Republican senators—including Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski—wrote their on letter to the Court urging them not to be "cowed" by the brief. The brief suggesting that if the Court took on a totally moot gun case because the NRA was telling it to, it might look political and that might not be great for the Court.
McConnell, the person who refused to allow a Supreme Court nominee from President Barack Obama to even get a hearing so that he could hold the seat open for a Republican president, writes that the justices "must not be cowed by the threats of opportunistic politicians." That he didn't then spontaneously combust or be hit by lightning is one sign that deities do not exist. "The Democrats' amicus brief demonstrates that their court-packing plans are more than mere pandering," McConnell's letter states. "They are a direct, immediate threat to the independence of the judiciary and the rights of all Americans," he, the jointly-owned subsidiary of Trump, the NRA, Putin, and the Federalist Society who has created this Court intoned. Again, without combusting.
All of which, Whitehouse says, proves his point. "The response to our brief from Republicans and the partisan donor interests driving the court's polarization shows exactly why it's time to speak out," he said in a statement Thursday. "They want us to shut up about their capture of the court; we will not."