‘Guns apocalypse’: Legal experts deliver warnings after Supreme Court decides to take up big 2A case

Legal experts are issuing warnings after the U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it will take up a major Second Amendment case, its first in a decade – and warning of a “guns apocalypse” given the extremely conservative makeup of the Court.

“This case is likely to pave the way to the Supreme Court declaring a constitutional right to concealed public carry, overriding many state and local restrictions on the ability to bear concealed arms in public,” Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern writes.

In theory what that might mean is not only an explosion of people carrying guns, but people carrying guns that you cannot see – until it’s too late. It quite literally is the Republican Party’s dream.

Vox’s Ian Millhiser warns “The Supreme Court guns apocalypse is now upon us.”

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The case is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Corlett. Millhiser says the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case, which would come in about a year from now, “could transform the judiciary’s understanding of the Second Amendment and lay waste to many of the nation’s gun laws.”

In short, he says, it “could make the NRA’s dreams come true.”

The case, as Millhiser describes it, focuses on a 108-year old New York State law that requires anyone who wants a gun to obtain a permit, and to show “proper cause,” in other words, to prove they have a need for it. Someone “who merely wants to carry a gun, because of a general belief that it would be useful if they are ever the victim of a violent crime, cannot obtain a license.”

The Second Amendment has just 27 words: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The 6-3 “Trump Court” is more than likely to strike down the New York law.

“Indeed,” Millhiser writes, “Corlett could potentially dismantle more than a decade of judicial decisions interpreting the Second Amendment, imposing prohibitive limits on lawmakers’ ability to reduce gun violence.”

To paraphrase Oprah, “And you get a gun, and you get a gun, and you get a gun.”

Here’s what some other legal experts are saying:

Former DOJ prosecutor:

Law professor, Georgia State Law:

Former US Attorney, now MSNBC/NBC Legal analyst and Law Professor:

Slate’s Stern (quoted above), author of “American Justice 2019: The Roberts Court Arrives”:

Attorney, politics and law reporter at NY’s Fox5:

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