What’s Next SCOTUS? Guns Are People? Fetuses?

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We have Fascist Federalist Society groomed and approved “Justices” who have issued precedent setting opinions saying things like Money is Speech and Corporations are People.   WTF?   Legal scholars have skewered the reasoning far better than I could ever dream of doing.   (Of course conservative blowhards have tried to shore up those flawed decisions)  I for one think gun worship in this country has grown to rival Christianity in numbers of people devoted to the belief system.   Of course, there’s crossover as many fundie religious types are also gun fetishists.   From where I sit this crowed obsesses over protecting guns with the same fervor they obsess about fetuses.   However there’s a difference.   Once that fetus becomes a baby and grows into a child (say a kid going to school) and later an adult all bets are off.   GUNS on the other hand are not only sacred, but NEVER lose the need for protection!

Cast in that light is it crazy to imagine a time (and soon) where SCOTUS itself might declare guns are persons?

I wish I could say this is pure satire of the type we might read in The Onion.   I truly hope that’s all it is but as I said these RWNJ Federalist Society F-Wads were groomed (if conservatives don’t like me using that word truthfully and accurately I have no “eff” to give.)  for this kind of thing.   Chief Justice Roberts might have spent some effort trying to move slowly and whittle away at decency and common sense in the Court’s work so as to not raise hackles.   But then McConnell got old enough to no longer care about anything other than using the courts to ENFORCE his views on this country.   His takeover of the process of filling judicial seats destroyed any and all remnants of the norms/customs and Constitutional duties (as they’d been understood up to that point) and nakedly became a dictator to filling judicial openings.   Use any means necessary to prevent a Democratic President from filling seats until there was a Republican in the WH to make the nominations.

It’s that simple.   Anyone who says he didn’t sit down with the honchos at The Federalist Society during President Obama’s second term and knock back Kentucky Bourbon while crafting the big push (putsch?) is kidding themselves.  When it came to their dream of altering history via the Courts and SCOTUS in particular the rise of Trump made them splooge like the character Randy at the end South Park’s Overlogging episode.

Keep in mind this was always about more than abortion (and birth control) which has provided the core of GOP support in recent decades.  Waving THAT if front of the “Christian” crazies easily distracted them from an insidious agenda to create a SCOTUS sanctioned country where,  as in Colonial times a handful of white property owners led by a cabal of really rich ones ruled.  Only without some pesky King from across the ocean demanding HIS cut in the form of taxes.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the appallingly MIS-leadingly named Federalist Society came about because ultra conservatives were upset at what they deemed “activist judges”, which included (in their minds) heretic/traitors to conservative GOP principles judges and Justices appointed by Republican Presidents.   Over time, in fits and starts the Courts, including SCOTUS clarified the definition of rights in the Constitution (and its amendments) beyond the “black and white text in keeping with updated views of words and their meaning as well as the views of those who wrote and ratified the Constitution.  Clarifications that happened to expand the rights conveyed in the Constitution beyond the group of white property owners who were the only ones allowed to vote back then.  Conservatives have fought tooth and nail against that.   If they had their way “originalist” crap wouldn’t stop at the time the Constitution was written and ratified, it would mean going back to the Articles of Confederation.   That arrangement which failed and was leading to us falling apart as a country.   Sadly, while the real Federalists who believed a strong central government was needed had their views watered down in the final product by people who either were mostly concerned with maintaining slavery or who wouldn’t have minded going back to British rule – facilitating the new arrangement in exchange for Peerage granted by the King.   But I’m getting off the point.

The point is that these Fascists only believe certain people (as in white, and with some exception males only) are entitled to the full benefits of freedom bestowed by our Constitution.   In their minds even the Bill of Rights itself isn’t really part of the Constitution much less the additional amendments.  The slow but steady of including more people and groups/classes of people as worthy of all the rights and benefits envisioned in our Constitution and the amendments bugs the living crap out of these conservatives!   It doesn’t take mega intelligence to read our Constitution and see all manner of concepts (including and especially the right to privacy) enshrined in it.   In fact, one of the huge debates delegates had about adding the Bill of Rights was that some feared (correctly as we know) that future generations would include people who would point to some specific set of words or a passages and say “See?  SEE??? The founders didn’t actually specifically say that word/phrase so that right you claim doesn’t actually exist.   And because they didn’t specifically say it there in black and white text they never, ever ever ever dreamed people would one day think they had any such intent!”

The whole issue of Enumerated Rights was a thorny one, and it’s worth noting that the original Bill of Rights included more than ten amendments.   The ones you’re familiar with are merely the ones that were ratified by enough states to be included in the final product!  (I’ve mentioned this before but will say it again – the amendments were NOT drafted with any view of ranked order of importance, but more due to matters in the main text that some delegates wanted a specific amendment in the Bill of Rights to address.   Fun fact – what we know as the second amendment was actually number four in the draft sent out for ratification!)  In any case, to deal with this whole b.s. argument about something not being addressed or defined in the Bill of Rights #9 ( The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. ) was supposed to take care of that.   Sort of a “catch-all” type thing.

Which conservatives of course ignore.

Since they ignore that, they feel free to engage in all manner of hypocrisy.   Which includes people like you and me pointing out things like privacy that our founders clearly thought people had a right to while creating out of nothing other “Constitutional” principles.   Like money being speech or corporations being people!   Even with abortion/reproductive rights eliminated they will still have (and will milk for all it’s worth) the prospect of distorting freedom of religion beyond all reason to declare this is a “Christian” (their version of course – the RWNJ “Evangilical” Prosperity Gospel/Dominionist version) nation.   Yes Israel and all you conservative butt-wipes over there who have supported the GOP – just wait until you see AMERICAN “Christianity turned loose!   You worry about anti-Semitism now?   Just wait.

Violence is an epidemic in this country, and guns make it far worse than it would otherwise be.   More specifically, certain types of guns make it truly awful as does the increasingly easy access to guns.   I for one am convinced the push for more people to have guns is actually an insidious, evil and calculated strategy.   What conservatives truly mean with their “anyone should get any gun they want” and be able to “open carry” or “concealed carry” in reality means WHITE people.   People who look like me.   We see again and again how LE shoots non-white people dead on the spot if they even think there might be a gun!  This most recent mass murderer was shot and killed but how often in these situations do we see these WHITE mass murderers get taken into custody?   Hell, Kyle Ratt-face-House literally walked through police lines telling them he’d shot people and they didn’t even detain him!   They just waved him right on through!   Imagine if a non-white, especially a particularly dark skinned black person had approached them as “poor little” Kyle did.   We all know what the result would have been.

While you’re thinking about that, think about the “Stop the Steal” b.s. and the threats against election workers and even elected local and state officials.   And armed groups trying to kidnap say Governors they don’t like?   Dark, ominous forces have felt a call to action.   I’m one of those who believe January 6 might not have worked out for those who plotted it, but believe they have done plenty of after-action analysis and will be better prepared moving forward.

In the meantime state after state has legislatures falling all over each other trying to enact laws making it harder to vote.   All the while stirring up countless millions of white people with messages of “the other” taking over.   “Replacement Theory” is I think about to surpass CRT as the buzzword.   CRT is after all something that was created for law schools examining some specific areas of the law and no one who wasn’t a lawyer had heard of it until recently.   But Replacement Theory is a simple concept that even MAGA goobers can instantly grasp – the concept that these “non-white” people are gonna take our places hits home.   And it dovetails nicely with pre-ingrained notions of “race traitors” too.

Mix all this together with unfettered access to buy and carry guns knowing damn well that non-white people who try to do what white people get away with every day would be lucky to only get arrested (they’d usually get shot dead on the spot) and what do you have?   A country full of angry white people amped up on hate trumpted by politicians and right-wing news/opinion outlets emboldened to threaten and worse.   Threaten people who just want to exercise their right to vote.   Threaten those who would follow the law and count the votes.   And threaten so much more.

I maintain that when the gun rights crowd shouts about freedom and gun rights they actually mean only for WHITE people.   So it follows that they consider guns as holy objects, things that have to be protected at all costs.

It also follows that the conservative hacks that now dominate the judiciary feel the same.   In practice they know all these new permissive gun laws and “rights” will actually only be fully enjoyed by certain people.   And someday they will get around to creating new Constitutional law from the residue of their Sharts to formally exclude non-white’s gun rights.

In the meantime it’s clear that SCOTUS has a majority of members, just as the rest of the federal judiciary does (and many states) who find guns to be sacred.   All guns.  Sacred.  Worthy of protection.   Constitutional protection!

If people, even school children get slaughtered so what?  GUNS are sacred!   And as for kids getting killed well, while they were fetuses they were sacred too but once born they were on their own.   Hell, I’m sure many conservatives feel (even if they also have a twinge of “well, it’s a shame but…” feelings) that kids slaughtered in classrooms and their loved ones shouldn’t mind being sacrificed on the alter of Gun Rights!

So if you’ve read this far is it crazy to think of SCOTUS granting guns personhood with all the rights people (well, WHITE people at least) get?

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Fuck, my brain hurts!So much for the melting pot. There was a line in the movie “Bullworth”
    that i heartily agree with…paraphrase, but that “we should all keep fucking each other until we’re just Americans”. For crying out loud,the human genome,science! Race,religion,social constructs to exert/maintain power or absolve ourselves of responsibility. America is for all of us .Time to panther up? Black panthers,red panthers,yellow,lgbtq,women,latin/x panther cubs! Oh,wait.It’s only for the frightened white dominionist,nationalist,fascist,populist nazi’s.
    anybody else who arms up is proving their theories,not trying to protect themselves from the real and very present threat. I’ve spent my life as an optimistic pacifist…i am no longer certain. I want to love this country again.

  2. “I maintain that when the gun rights crowd shouts about freedom and gun rights they actually mean only for WHITE people.”

    You should’ve bolstered that point by reminding folks that the ONLY time that Ronald Reagan ever considered–much less got passed–any kind of gun control laws was while he was Governor of California and a bunch of (legally armed) Black Panthers decided to march on Sacramento–ironically, to protest police brutality.

    Reagan would be quoted, partly in response to questions about the Mulford Act, as saying he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons” and he believed guns to be a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will.”

    And, even more ironically–at least by today’s standard–the NRA wholeheartedly supported the Act with its “sensible” approach to gun control.

    • Damn! As many times as I’ve cited Reagan and the Mulford Act on political blogs I should have remembered that. Thanks for raising the point.

  3. At it’s heart ‘Gunrights’ has come to mean the right of corporations to make and sell guns.

    Because corporations are people too, right?

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