https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/blood-hand-print
The Supreme Court just overturned the bump stock ban implemented after the deadliest mass shooting in American history.
In rendering this judgment, I believe this Supreme Court has finally achieved the status of worst Supreme Court ever along with, perhaps, the Court that made the Dred Scott decision. In the Dred Scott decision, the Court stated that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and, therefore, could not expect any protection from the federal government or the courts. The opinion also stated that Congress had no authority to ban slavery from a Federal territory.
On its 11-year journey to the Supreme Court, the Scott v Sanford case became an enormously explosive issue in American politics.
The decision in Dred Scott v Sandford has been widely regarded as the worst in American history. That is, until perhaps the advent of this Roberts Court that has cut such a wide swath through American rights and liberties.
I truly believe at this point the Court presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts will be remembered with the kind of contempt formerly reserved just for the Court under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Dred Scott fame.
The 6-3 majority opinion on bump stocks was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, arguably the most corrupt of the justices due to his accepting “gifts”. Thomas found the Justice Department was wrong to declare that bump stocks transformed semiautomatic rifles into illegal machine guns because, he wrote, each trigger depression in rapid succession still only releases one shot.
Let’s get this straight. A gunman in Las Vegas fired more than 1,000 rounds into the crowd in 11 minutes, sending thousands of people running for their lives, and he did it with semi-automatic weapons fitted with those accessories. Hundreds were wounded and dozens killed and the argument to keep that accessory legal was that these people were killed one bullet at a time?
But it’s not just Thomas who has blood on his hands. It took the other five Republican justices to concur.
When I read about this decision, I confess my first thought was: “How much did that decision cost the gun industry and its lobbyists?”
I know, this is a wretched thing to even contemplate, but I am not alone in my low opinion of this Supreme Court. In recent years, approval of this Court has fallen to its lowest favorable percentage (40%).
Thanks to the Roberts Court, not only are reproductive rights on the ballot this fall, gun violence is as well.
"How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died?" The answer is still "blowin' in the wind."