The Supreme Court Showdown on Gun Violence

If you think that states and cities should be hog-tied in the face of gun violence, then Monday might just be your lucky day.

Just one criminal justice case remains on the Supreme Court's docket this year, and it'll be a blockbuster. In McDonald v. Chicago, the justices are set to announce their first gun rights decision since the landmark 2008 decision that created an individual right to bear arms.

The Court's 2008 decision in Heller v. D.C. recognized, for the first time in our Constitution's history, that the right to bear arms applies to individuals rather than "a well regulated militia," as stated in the Amendment. Since that decision dealt with gun regulations in the federal District of Columbia, however, the question remained as to whether the Second Amendment should be "incorporated" — legalese for "applied against state and local laws."

A decision in McDonald is anticipated on the final day of the Supreme Court's term this Monday. After the justices announce their decision — likely incorporating the Second Amendment — expect local gun regulations to fall left and right in a flood of litigation from coast to coast.

Shouldn't the conservative Supreme Court defer to state and local leaders making laws that they deem best to protect the voters who put them in office? Since Thomas Jefferson's rift with the Federalists, during the Civil War, and all the way up through the Civil Rights movement, there's been an element of the American politic eager to invoke "states' rights" to restrain federal lawmakers. This refrain has generally been a favorite of conservatives — including conservative legal scholars — eager to limit abortion rights, economic reforms and access to health care.

So why are we on the precipice of a conservative federal court telling states and localities how they can and cannot manage gun violence? Sadly, the conservatives sitting on today's high court are an inconsistent, unprincipled lot. Whether the issue is corporate electioneering, gun regulation or reproductive rights, the traditionally binding considerations of precedent and deference to legislatures means little to this locomotive of judicial activism.

As Justice Stephen Breyer morosely observed, "It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much." On Monday, we're likely to see the law swing even further to the right at the hands of the Roberts Court.

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