Oh look…a Robert Spitzer op-ed. Let’s take a look and see what kind of brilliant insights this very respected expert has for us. He is, after all, an academic that antigun courts take super-seriously. The article’s headline itself — What Happens When the Second Amendment Collides With Public Safety? — is based on a false premise. The reality is, the Second Amendment right to carry need not ever collide with “public safety.”
Especially in the context of the Pretti shooting, Spitzer seems to implicitly accept the argument made by some administration officials (and Trump himself) that the mere act of carrying at a protest means you are asking to be shot by police.
This fraught political moment has thus found the Trump administration in the uncomfortable position of taking criticism from both liberals who blame heavy-handed federal agent tactics and conservatives who bristle at the administration’s seeming abandonment of public gun carry rights.
On the one hand, civilian gun carry is indeed a right under the Second Amendment according to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in the Bruen case where the high court said that individuals have a “right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” The court proposed no exception for doing so in a public gathering.
Spitzer says carry is indeed a right “according to the Supreme Court.” Interesting. I thought it was because the plain text of the Second Amendment says we have a right to bear arms, which all relevant historical sources confirm is a reference to public carry.
If you ever wondered why an “expert” like Spitzer (and the other usual suspects) always takes the side of the government in gun rights litigation, you can start with the fact that they clearly don’t believe the Second Amendment protects an individual right at all.
On the other hand, the consequences of such action are clear. Public gun carrying, especially in the context of a public demonstration or similar gathering is, no matter the intentions of the carrier, a terrible idea.
I should have included the very next paragraph. He basically concedes carry is a right (because SCOTUS said so), but then says it’s a terrible idea to exercise that right.
This is one of the key guys courts rely on as an expert witness. Implicitly denies carry is a right, and even if it is, it’s one that should not be exercised.
Spitzer says “Even though most of those who acquire guns for self-defense say that they feel safer having them, when the public is polled on the matter, the response is fear. For example, when asked in a Gallup poll how safe they would feel in a “public place” that allowed the concealed carry of firearms, 65% of the public said less safe, 25% more safe, and 8% no difference.”
This is misleading as hell, because the poll he is referring to is from 2004. Public opinion on carry has utterly transformed since then, and over 60% of Americans approve of the Bruen ruling.
Except that we know, definitively, that people who legally carry almost never commit crime, as evidenced from government data from several states. Both the California and New Jersey state DOJs effectively conceded this point in litigation because they failed to rebut it even when given the chance to do so.
Public impressions aside, numerous studies spanning disciplines from psychology to criminology make clear that the presence of guns in the presence of others inflames aggression and makes violence more, not less, likely. For example, a study of over 30,000 public demonstrations from 2020 to 2021 found that violence was more than six times more likely to break out when guns were present.
Hilarious to see them still beating this drum when we have just seen the broadest carry rights expansion in US history. After Bruen, the antigun holdouts like New York, California, and New Jersey were forced to issue permits to the broader public for the first time. At the same time, lots of formerly shall-issue states have adopted constitutional carry.
A study from Stanford University of four decades of data found that states that adopted more liberal gun carry laws, and therefore more civilian gun carrying, saw an increase in violent crime of from 13% to 15%. Numerous studies of states that have adopted broad “stand your ground” laws (meaning that people when confronted with a perceived threat in public had no duty to retreat) and that also have liberal gun carry policies have seen significantly higher rates of gun killings. A study of intimate partner violence found that such violence was three times more likely when guns were present. In short, more guns lead to more crime.
So if there was ever a way to “stress test” whether an expanded right to carry leads to more violence, this was it. The result? We are now experiencing the lowest national homicide rate in modern US history, and it’s still dropping.
The predictions of people like Spitzer and his gun control group allies were totally wrong. They should be discredited.
He made this exact same point in his expert report in CRPA v. LA County Sheriffs Department as well. But as we pointed out, and the district court (a Biden-appointed judge no less) adopted , Spitzer leaves out the fact that open carry was generally allowed and unrestricted: “While these historical licensing schemes sometimes wholly prohibited individuals from carrying a concealed firearm, the LA Defendants do not identify whether, or which, of the cited municipalities or states allowed the open carrying of firearms…” Cal. Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. L.A. Cty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, 745 F. Supp. 3d 1037, 1057 (C.D. Cal. 2024)
Finally, the link between civilian gun carrying in society and mayhem was well understood by our ancestors. From the 1600s to the start of the twentieth century, every state in the country enacted laws that restricted concealed weapons carrying, and three-fourths of the states had laws restricting open weapons carrying.
The Supreme Court has carved out a new right pertaining to gun carrying.
But that does not make it a good idea. The slogan that “an armed society is a polite society” is both wrong and inimical to public safety.
Spitzer himself, however, submitted lots of evidence in his expert report that even where concealed carry was banned, you could apply for a permit to carry concealed, and those permits were typically issued on a shall-issue basis in the 19th century.
And no, the Supreme Court did not “carve out” a new right. It’s right there in the plain text of the Second Amendment. It’s just unfortunate that this sort of evidence-free hackery continues to be taken seriously.
Kostas Moros is Director of Legal Research and Education for the Second Amendment Foundation. This post was adapted by SNW from an article posted at X.
Spitzer himself, however, is an educated idiot assuming he is educated and the idiot part is a given.
There ain’t no “but” in the 2nd Amendment, but; there are plenty of butts on the left.