It Ain't About Gun Control
So let's talk guns an' the US Supreme Court, poozers!
On paper, the Supreme Court is a decent idea. Cuz the justices are appointed fer life, they don't gotta campaign, which oughta incentivize them to care only about justice. Cuz they're appointed by Congress, though, they're still tied to a democratic institution. Best of both worlds, right?
This week, the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States fer ya' poozers that ain't political wonks) struck down the ban on bump stocks fer rifles. Now I ain't gonna talk about whether bump stocks should be banned, cuz the news is doin' that ad nauseam already, an' it entirely misses the point.
The point is there ain't no constitutional reason for it. They didn't argue about the Second Amendment. Essentially, they struck down the law just cuz they didn't like it.
That ain't what the SCOTUS is s'posed ta' do. The SCOTUS is s'posed ta' be a check on the power a' Congress an' the President, not a power unto itself. Justices are unelected an' serve life terms, so if they take legislative power unto themselves, democracy goes right out the window.
It's temptin' ta' think this is some kinda new low, an' I do think we oughta be worried, especially with Alito havin' come out an' flat-out said he's a political operative who don't think compromise with liberals is possible. The SCOTUS is key ta' fascist plans to destroy what shreds a' democracy we've got left in this country.
But make no mistake, the SCOTUS has been abusin' its authority fer over 150 years.
Ya' probably know about the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, but among leftists, this decision's often part a' the larger narrative about how the US wuz built on slavery. That's true, but I wanna zoom in an' point out that the Dred Scott decision was a clear case a' the court ignorin' existin' law, the constitution, an' the Founding Fathers (racist as they were), an' overturnin' a law just cuz they didn't like it. The two dissenters, Curtis an' McLean, both pointed this out.
There weren't no precedent anywhere ta' strip citizenship based on race. In fact, there wuz the opposite, as black people had been citizens in at least five a' the original states.
There's also a rule in the Supreme Court ta' make rulings as narrow as possible. The majority decided they had no jurisdiction, an' by the Court's rules, the decision shoulda ended there. Instead, the Court violated its rules and issued a sweepin' judgment strippin' citizenship an' the protection a law.
Ya' see this in almost all the Supreme Court's worst decisions. Plessy v Ferguson ignored the 14th amendment, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. pointed out that Lochner v New York was based on economic ideology and not legal principle, Buck v. Bell ignored the 14th amendment, the three dissenting justices in Korematsu v United States tore apart any legal basis for that horrific decision, and toward the modern era Bush v Gore and Citizens United v FEC both showed that the Court would ignore the law ta' push a political agenda.
I ain't defendin' the US Constitution. I'm sayin' that even the flawed checks 'n balances of the constitution are ignored by the Supreme Court, an' have been since the beginnin'.
This is yet another reason why we can't fix nothin' within the system. The SCOTUS won't let victories stand. So organize locally, outside the system, an' we can fix things!
