Nearly 400 million weapons were in circulation in the civilian population in the United States in 2017, or 120 weapons per 100 people. Last year, more than 20,000 homicides per firearm were identified.
Le Monde with AFP
This is a blow for the defender of arms control in the United States and a “victory” for the nra . The Supreme Court invalidated, Thursday, June 23, a New York State law on the port of weapons, devoting the right of the Americans to go out of their homes.
this decision , taken to a A majority of six in nine judges, all conservatives, intervenes when the country is still in shock from a series of murderous shootings, one of which, on May 24, killed 21 in a primary school in Texas. “The second and fourteenth amendment to the Constitution protect the right of an individual to carry a handgun for his self-defense outside his home,” writes Judge Clarence Thomas for the majority.
The Court acts “without considering the potentially deadly consequences of his decision”, regretted his progressive colleague Stephen Breyer in a distinct argument by recalling that “in 2020, 45,222 Americans were killed by firearms”.
Literal reading of the second amendment
Concretely, it concerns a law which has limited since 1913 the issuance of permit of weapons concealed to people with reason to believe that they may have to defend themselves, for example because of their profession or threats targeting them. It had been challenged in court by two firearms of firearms, who had been refused permits, and a subsidiary of the NRA.
The NRA militates for a literal reading of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Ratified in 1791, he stated that “a well -organized militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right that the people to hold and carry weapons will not be transgressed”.
In 1939, the Supreme Court had judged that it protected the right to use weapons in the context of a force for maintaining order, like the army or the police, but was not a individual right to self-defense.
She changed position during a historic judgment in 2008 and established for the first time a right to have a weapon at her home to defend herself. However, it has left the cities and states to regulate transport outside the home, so that the rules are very variable from one place to another. Thursday’s judgment puts an end to this latitude by engraving in marble the right to carry a weapon.
At first, it should bring down laws similar to that of New York in force in other states, some of which are very populated like California or New Jersey. Other restrictions in force essentially in the Democratic States could be contested in court under this new legal framework.
Nearly 400 million weapons were in circulation in the civilian population in the United States in 2017, or 120 weapons per 100 people, according to the Small Arms Survey project. Last year, more than 20,000 homicides per firearm were identified on the Gun Violence Archive site.