A Win For The Second Amendment – Joe Cunningham Show

The Joe Cunningham Show airs 3-4 p.m. every weekday on NewsTalk 96.5 KPEL. The daily show notes offer you a look into the topics of the day and the links to the top stories and Joe's own writings on the state of politics in Louisiana and around the country.

Supreme Court Sides With The Second Amendment

The Supreme Court handed down a major gun rights victory in a 6-3 decision today. The decision makes it clear that while concealed carry laws are constitutional, subjective criteria for issuing them are not. Justice Thomas authored the majority opinion, which was ironically released on his 74th birthday.

The Firearms Policy Coalition, one of the major gun rights groups to be vocal on this issue, celebrated in an email to supporters.

• The Court expressly rejected the “two-step” approach often employed by lower courts since the McDonald v. Chicago decision in 2010, saying that the Constitution “​​demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by history.”
• The Court expressly held that “when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.”
• Quoting the McDonald plurality opinion, the Court held that: “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.”
• The Court said that: “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense.”
• Ultimately, the Court held that: “New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.”

You can read more on this case at The Reload.

But Gun Control Advances In The Senate

According to Fox News, Senate Democrats (with the help of 14 Republicans, including Louisiana's Bill Cassidy) have cleared the way for a final vote on the bipartisan gun control bill unveiled on Tuesday night. Sen. Chris Murphy announced that final passage will come either later today or tomorrow.

"This is an incredibly important day in the United States Senate. Final passage will be either later today or early tomorrow, and we will be well on our way to saving 1000s of lives in this country," Murphy said Thursday. "30 years Congress has done nothing to try to address the epidemic of school shootings and murders and suicides in this country. And while this doesn't do everything we need to do. This is a way that we show it's possible to break the logjam."

Biden's Approval Continues To Plummet

Reuters has a new breakdown of Joe Biden's continuously falling approval numbers. It's not good.

U.S. President Joe Biden's public approval rating fell for a fourth straight week to 36% matching its lowest level last seen in late May, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Wednesday.

The president's approval rating has stayed below 50% since August, a warning sign that his Democratic Party could lose control of at least one chamber of the U.S. Congress in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

While Biden is not on the ballot in November, Democrats are. Biden is the de facto leader of his party, and his numbers are dragging the party way down with very little on the horizon to offer any sort of padding.

Headlines of the Day

• FDA orders Juul e-cigarettes off U.S. market (Axios)
• $500 Million In Political Ad Spend Already Booked – For Just 5 Races (Inside Radio)
• Uvalde schools police chief placed on leave amid fierce criticism of school shooting response (The Texas Tribune)
• Supreme Court strikes down New York law regulating concealed handguns in public (ABC News)
• Inflation Complicates Biden’s Deliberations on Student Loan Forgiveness (New York Times)

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