Prominent Conservatives Back Letting States Limit Guns in Public
The New York Times
A brief filed in a major gun control case to be heard on Wednesday by the Supreme Court argued that limits on the public carrying of weapons were consistent with the Second Amendment.
WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court hears a major Second Amendment case on Wednesday, many expect that the court’s recently expanded conservative majority will be poised to strike down the New York law under review, one that imposes strict limits on carrying guns outside the home.
But a brief filed by a group of prominent conservative lawyers and former government officials in Republican administrations has complicated that picture. Drawing on originalism, the interpretive method embraced by the conservative legal movement, the brief argued that “the original understanding of the Second Amendment was that there is not an absolute, unfettered right to carry loaded guns in public.”
J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge revered by conservatives, was among the lawyers who filed the brief. He said the issue was straightforward.
