A headline in Sunday’s Washington Post presented a new take in the discussion over the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court: “The next Supreme Court pick matters less than you think.”
Georgetown law professor David Cole wrote that SCOTUS is unlikely to overturn the landmark Heller decision, citing the conservative court’s reluctance to overturn Roe v. Wade and Miranda v. Arizona. He joins other gun-control supporters, like Everytown president John Feinblatt and the Bloomberg-funded website The Trace, who scoff at gun owners’ fears that Garland would join the four sitting justices who opposed Heller and revoke it.
This sounds a lot like “No one is coming for your guns,” which, like the Post article, ignores the fact that Heller doesn’t have to be overturned for the Second Amendment to be regulated into oblivion. Regardless of what they say, a Supreme Court hostile to gun rights would not bode well for our hard-won gains for those rights.
