For Immediate Release: July 7, 2022
Supreme Court: The Government Can't Require Citizens to Prove the Need for Self-Protection in Order to Carry a Gun
WASHINGTON, D.C. — By a 6-3 decision in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a New York law which allowed government officials to pick and choose which class of citizens were deemed worthy of self-protection.
Affirming that the Second Amendment “right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not a second-class right,” the Court ruled that individuals do not have to demonstrate some special need to the government for approval before exercising any other constitutional rights. In an amicus brief, The Rutherford Institute argued that the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution must be available to all law-abiding citizens and not parceled out at the whim of government bureaucrats.
“When considered in the context of prohibitions against the government, the Second Amendment reads as a clear rebuke against any attempt to restrict the citizenry’s gun ownership. As such, it is as necessary an ingredient for maintaining that tenuous balance between the citizenry and their republic as any of the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, especially the right to freedom of speech, assembly, press, petition, security, and due process,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “In this way, the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights in their entirety stand as a xxxxxx against a police state.”
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