They say no news is good news, but is that really the case when it comes to the silence from the Supreme Court on cases dealing with the Illinois ban on so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines and New York’s “good moral character requirement”? On today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb says it’s impossible to know what the Court’s current inaction might indicate. 

I think the Court is pretty overextended right now, with a number of cases on their plate that they’re looking at issuing decisions in or granting cert. They’re really kind of backed up right now, so I can’t read a whole lot into it. I don’t know, and I’d just be speculating. But my hope is we get a couple of favorable rulings on Second Amendment issues and a couple of grants of cert in some cases that are very important.

We know we’re going to get decisions in Rahimi and Cargill in the next few weeks, but it’s an open question as to how favorable those rulings are going to be for gun owners. During Rahimi‘s oral arguments a majority of the justices seemed inclined to agree that Zachey Rahimi shouldn’t be allowed to possess a firearm, but Gottlieb is hoping that if the Court does rule against Rahimi it will do so in a narrow decision instead of broadly upholding all of the current statutes dealing with prohibited persons. 

In fact, as my colleague Tom Knighton noted earlier today, the Second Amendment Foundation is ready to defend Donald Trump when the NYPD formally revokes the former president’s concealed carry license. 

Even if he was convicted and it was a legitimate charge, the bottom line is that someone shouldn’t lose their Second Amendment rights forever for a process-based non-violent crime when the individual has shown there’s no likelihood at all that they’re going to misuse those firearms or commit a crime with them. It goes to the heart of the unconstitutionality of the laws that are in place and need to be taken down. They affect all of us, not just Donald Trump, but you, me, and all your listeners and viewers.   

Gottlieb says he’s a little more reluctant to tender the same offer to Hunter Biden if he’s convicted of possessing a gun as an unlawful user of drugs and lying about his drug use on the Form 4473 that was submitted to the National Instant Check System; both because of the nature of Biden’s alleged offense and because of the anti-gun machinations of Hunter’s dad. 

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, I suppose, and they deserve to live under the laws they supported.

There’s something to be said for Gottlieb’s argument, though if Hunter is convicted in federal court and raises a Second Amendment argument on appeal I wouldn’t be surprised if SAF and almost every other Second Amendment organization end up filing amicus briefs on his behalf. The Fifth Circuit has already signaled that barring all “unlawful” users of drugs from possessing a firearm is a violation of the Second Amendment, and defending the president’s son from his father’s anti-gun activism offers a great opportunity to highlight the dangers of the DOJ’s belief that only “law-abiding citizens” are entitled to their right to keep and bear arms. 

Check out the entire conversation with Alan Gottlieb in the video window below, and be sure to tune in tomorrow when we’ll be speaking with Doug Hamlin, the new executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, about the efforts to reform and rebuild the organization.