Seth Lipsky (courtesy davidduke.com)

Thanks to a recent court case revoking the “good cause” provision of D.C.’s concealed carry permitting process, Hell’s getting frosty. The resolutely, obstinately, relentlessly anti-gun New York Post has posted an editorial by Seth Lipsky that calls for the liberalization, make that reform of New York’s City’s “may issue” concealed carry [non]licensing procedure. The headline – DC loss for gun control puts New York City’s laws at risk – is a head fake worthy of Marshawn Lynch. Check this out . . .

It’s not yet clear whether DC and its police chief, Cathy Lanier, are going to appeal the district court ruling [by US District Judge Frederick J. Scullin]. It is clear, though, that the case will echo in New York and other cities that require a showing of need to carry a pistol . . .

If Scullin’s judgment were imposed on New York — either by a higher court or Congress — it would render unenforceable the city’s demand that permit applicants show a good reason (usually a clear need for self-defense) before getting approved.

It’s a big deal because the “good reason” hurdle is being used by municipalities to evade the Bill of Rights. What would be the reaction were Americans required to show “good reason” before they were allowed to pray in public?

Or before they were allowed to speak on a street corner? Or before they were allowed to publish or read newspapers? Or, for that matter, to demand to see a search warrant. Or to remain silent when arrested.

All are protected under the Bill of Rights. No questions asked.

How ’bout them [big] apples? OK, sure, this isn’t an editorial from the Post’s editorial board. But they printed it, a decision I’m filing under The Age of Miracles Has Not Passed. Equally astounding, the editorial ends without the usual anti-pistol prevarication. It ends, in fact, with a bang.

The most progressive state is one of the most regressive when it comes to the Second Amendment. And it’s a far cry from New York’s roots; the state ratified the Constitution only on the condition that it would protect the right to bear arms. It carefully marked that condition in a famous statement put out in Poughkeepsie at the time the Constitution was ratified.

It asserted that the “people have the right to keep and bear arms.” It said nothing about them having to show good reason.

And for good reason. Anyway, I need a cigar to celebrate this crack in the wall of Big City gun control. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

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37 COMMENTS

  3. The NY Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch. The editorial staff isn’t as biased against firearms as many.

    • Maybe its staff isn’t (unlikely as that seems), but Murdoch sure as hell is. Conservative or no, he is steeped in the English anti-gun bias that has infected his Australian homeland as well.

  4. “Maybe if we give them just a little bit, those ammosexuals won’t ask for anything more?”

    Bwahahaha!

  5. This does seem like a big paradigm shift. At least a massive glitch in the matrix haha. But it makes sense to me as people see more rights either outright violated or heavily leaned upon by over-“enthusiastic” government. Rights are rights.

    …additionally, I’m surprised we haven’t been able to convince more of the hardcore Left to push back on “may issue” and similar laws in the name of fairness and equality. Any system that, in effect, entirely prevents normal people from doing something for which permission is regularly if not automatically granted to the political class and to those wealthy enough to be politically connected should be a HUGE red flag and moral problem for the Left. Nearly all of these sorts of gun regs are specifically in place to make it difficult or impossible for poor people, often meaning minorities, to exercise their rights either at all or at least within the confines of the labyrinthine law. Anyone saying that a photo ID is a “poll tax” and unconstitutional as a requirement for voting should be out there saying that the myriad financial hurdles to firearm ownership is exactly the same — a way to prevent poor people / minorities from owning guns. This could be “may issue,” or it could be excise taxes on firearms & ammo, mandatory training, mandatory ownership of a gun safe, mandatory licensing and registration fees, or even laws that attempt to ensure that inexpensive firearms are not available for sale at all. They’re all versions of the $200 tax that, in 1934 when it was enacted, ensured only a certain class of individuals could own these items deemed too dangerous for the plebeians. They’re all racist and classist, and “may issue” is one of the worst iterations of it.

    And, as always, Rights are not subject to arguments of “need.” The entire concept of “may issue” based on proof of one’s “need” to exercise a Right is ridiculous, made even more horrific by the entirely subjective standards by which “sufficient need” is determined.

    • all but the Voter Id thing is true.

      only citizens can Vote….
      you can only Vote once per election.

      Voter ID for ALL and One Day to vote!

      pre registration and voting at your pole only. end of story.

      if 400million people averageing $1.50 a day in india can ALL get voter IDs and vote on One Day! we should be able to.

      there is Zero excuse for ANYONE! if you have EBT or any welfare you can get ID. Besides Voter IDs are FREE!
      If your not a Citizen or illegal you should be Deported after min 10years in jail if you even try at minimum.

  9. Concealed carry is of no use to me, I don’t carry a purse. Besides, Open Carry is the right guaranteed by the Constitution, concealed carry can be banned.

    http://CaliforniaRightToCarry.org

    “[A] right to carry arms openly: “This is the right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and which is calculated to incite men to a manly and noble defence of themselves, if necessary, and of their country, without any tendency to secret advantages and unmanly assassinations.”” District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008) at 2809

    “[T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms (art. 2) is not infringed by laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons…” Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 US 275 – Supreme Court (1897) at 282.

    “In Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 251 (1846), the Georgia Supreme Court construed the Second Amendment as protecting the “natural right of self-defence” and therefore struck down a ban on carrying pistols openly. Its opinion perfectly captured the way in which the operative clause of the Second Amendment furthers the purpose announced in the prefatory clause, in continuity with the English right…Likewise, in State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann. 489, 490 (1850), the Louisiana Supreme Court held that citizens had a right to carry arms openly: “This is the right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and which is calculated to incite men to a manly and noble defence of themselves, if necessary, and of their country, without any tendency to secret advantages and unmanly assassinations.”” District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008) at 2809

    “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume 346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152-153; Abbott 333. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann., at 489-490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251…” District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008) at 2816

    • Concealed carry is of no use to me, I don’t carry a purse.

      I fail to see how denigrating those who choose to exercise their right to bear arms by carrying concealed is any more helpful or productive than denigrating those who choose to exercise their right to bear arms by carrying openly.

      • Charles, who is not a lawyer but fancies himself to be smarter than all the rest of the 2A attorneys in the country, refuses to accept that the Second Amendment doesn’t say “the right of the people to keep and (openly) bear arms, shall not be infringed,” and neither did the Supreme Court in Heller, which did not even consider the issue. But he will argue the point to his last dying breath.

      • Ditto. He might as well have said, “You may only exercise your right in a way I approve of.” Which is exactly completely in keeping with how anti see the issue – they are parallel views.

    • “Open Carry is the right guaranteed by the Constitution, concealed carry can be banned.”

      I keep re-reading the Second Amendment, and I can’t find the words “open” or “concealed” anywhere in there. What am I doing wrong?

      • No, no, no… you have to read all the words that aren’t there, just like Charles and the gun-grabbers (different words, to be fair).

  10. Seth Lipsky is a Vietnam veteran and a very Conservative commentator, so his sentiments are unsurprising. And the Post, like any other newspaper, will occasionally print commentaries that do not hew to the party line just to show their “journalistic integrity.” Excuse the oxymoron.

  11. Maybe the NY Post is returning to its roots. Back in the 60’s when I was a kid and lived in NY, the politics of the newspapers were: NYT, liberal Democrat, same as today; Herald Tribune and WSJ, what would now be called RINO; all the rest, definitely including the Post, much more to the right, appealing to working class people who had no great love of taxes and social engineering schemes.

    • I think your recollection is off by a few years. Until about 1976, The Post was a very leftist newspaper owned by Dorothy Schiff. Once Murdoch bought it, it made a sharp right turn on everything except guns.

      The Daily News was a right-wing newspaper until The Post switched its viewpoint. That’s when the News took a left turn.

      Your observations about Times is spot-on. As far as the Trib was concerned, Ogden Nash once wrote: “Like an art-lover looking at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre Is the New York Herald Tribune looking at Mr. Herbert Houvre.” The Trib was a bedrock Republican paper.

      And don’t get me started on the Brooklyn Eagle, the Mirror, the Herald, the Journal American or the World-Telegram & Sun.

  12. …

    Paul,
    You’ve got it a little mixed up there.
    Back in the day, the NY Post, then owned by the Schiff family, was New York’s liberal tabloid.
    Murdoch doesn’t buy it until 1976.
    The now broke & liberal NY Daily News was the conservative workingman’s paper.
    My Dad, who could have been Archie Bunker’s stunt double, read the Daily News.

    “Under Schiff’s tenure the Post was devoted to liberalism, supporting trade unions and social welfare, and featured some of the most-popular columnists of the time, such as Joseph Cookman, Drew Pearson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Max Lerner, Murray Kempton, Pete Hamill, and Eric Sevareid, in addition to theatre critic Richard Watts, Jr. and Broadway columnist Earl Wilson.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post
    …
    …

  14. That editorial was some remarkably frank and clear truthful candor, particularly considering the source.

  17. Y’know maybe all the civil unrest makes a lot of white folks and lefties re-think their anti-gun attitudes…”come to Jesus” without Jesus as it were. I doesn’t take a community organizer to see the po-leece aren’t t rying too hard to protect all of us…

  18. We need to have a frank discussion about common sense alliteration control in article titles. Nobody needs seven P words when you can hunt and write for sport with five.

    • The 1st Amendment allows anyone, no matter how badly they write or how many alliterative words they string together, to speak above or below their breath, scrawl lolcats in their own blood and blah whatever, I can’t keep this bad analogy going…

  19. It’s just about power. The libs/Dems/socialists want more power and it is clear that gun control is now costing them votes. So the wind shifts and we can keep our guns because the times they are a changin’. Or not. Although they were definitely serious about taking 2A rights away because the platform brought in votes they never, ever really gave a damn. To quote Hillary “What difference – at this point, what difference does it make?”

  20. “The most progressive state is one of the most regressive when it comes to the Second Amendment. And it’s a far cry from New York’s roots; the state ratified the Constitution only on the condition that it would protect the right to bear arms. It carefully marked that condition in a famous statement put out in Poughkeepsie at the time the Constitution was ratified.

    It asserted that the “people have the right to keep and bear arms.” It said nothing about them having to show good reason.”

    This is a great statement and we should use it when talking to antis.

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