Far Right Supreme Court enables Mass Murder in Service to Republican Ideology

H. SCOTT PROSTERMAN06/17/2024

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – “How can you be so obtuse?” That question to the sadistic warden got Tim Robbins’ character, Andy, an extra 30 days in solitary confinement in Frank Darabont’s 1994 Stephen King vehicle, The Shawshank Redemption. Now I ask of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS), “How can you employ such obtuse, tortured logic to argue that a bump stock does not technically make a weapon an automatic weapon; when the purpose of it is to enable rapid firing of multiple rounds?” It turns a single-shot firearm into an automatic weapon, in no uncertain terms. How was this adjudicated? By using a series of charts, graphics, animation and semantic Voodoo, to toe the party line of the National Rifle Association.

For all the so-called “conservative” apoplexy about liberals “coddling” criminals, the SCOTUS is promoting and enabling more mass murders. What’s worse, going easy on non-violent offenders with rehabilitation programs, or enabling mass murder? The six “conservative” justices have employed a tortured brand of logic to arrive at the conclusion: that is unlawful to prevent a psychotic monster from enhancing a gun so he can kill more people more quickly. They don’t parse the language to decide this; they torture it.

Can we please stop calling these people “conservative?” When I served as a congressional intern for Rep. Robin Beard (R-TN) in 1973, I disagreed with him on almost everything. So, he assigned me to do research at the Library of Congress to develop position papers from a liberal POV, so he could construct countering arguments on topics such as school vouchers. But Beard was an honorable conservative; protecting and defending the Constitution, though he was one of Richard Nixon’s last defenders. He promoted a strong US military, and supported NATO and other alliances. He defended Medicare and other social programs up to a limit. He valued life over firearms, though we both enjoyed target practice. He was fervently anti-Communist, though not an isolationist. Conservatism used to mean being a stickler about a balanced budget, but maintaining a strong tax base to do so. The Republican anti-tax fever arose under Ronald Reagan, abetted by Proposition 13 in California, and the Headley-Tisch amendment in Michigan in 1978. The six justices who voted to allow bump stocks are not conservative by any measure or metric; they are far-right wing ideologues, with an agenda to remake this country in alignment with the increasingly ascendant GOP Fascist model.

The Young Turks Video: “People Will DIE Because of This SCOTUS Decision”

Don’t look now, but the Supreme Court of the United States is now officially to the right even of Donald Trump, and that is saying something. Golden State Warriors basketball Coach Steve Kerr is one of the nation’s most fervent anti-gun spokesmen. Kerr lost his father, Prof. Malcom Kerr, to a political assassination in Lebanon in 1984, where he had been president of American University-Beirut. Yet, he agreed with Trump ONCE, on the need to banish the bump-stock.

Even Trump recognized the sense behind banishing bump stocks from firearms, in the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas concert massacre; and offered an unusually lucid statement, “There’s a great appetite, and I mean a very strong appetite, for background checks. … I think background checks are important. I don’t want to put guns into the hands of mentally unstable people, or people with rage or hate, sick people. I’m all in favor of it.” As SF Chronicle columnist Scott Ostler noted, “That passionate support for gun-safety legislation lasted as long as a cheeseburger on Trump’s lunch plate,” and Kerr formally endorsed Joe Biden this week. No major league sports coach has ever publically endorsed a presidential candidate before, though Kerr’s mentor San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich, has been equally outspoken on gun control and many political issues. Can I get a hizzah for Popovich-Kerr in 2028?

Republicans began trying to cripple the functions of government under President Ronald Reagan. He popularized the notion that government is the problem, not the solution. Regulatory agencies exist to keep people safe, to assure clean water and air, to restrain monopolistic corporate behavior, to assure a safe food supply. Under Reagan, the Republican ideology began evolving away from the classic “conservatism,” to Trump’s ideology of chaos and cruelty. He was the first president to appoint people to cabinet positions and agency directorships, whose purpose was not to steward those agencies and departments, but to sabotage their basic functions and missions.

The SCOTUS reasoning was articulated by Clarence Thomas: The bump stock makes guns fire more rounds faster, but the court held that it’s still technically not a machine gun. They are wrong on the facts here.. Machine guns were originally banned in the US in 1934, but AR-15’s are the gun of choice for mass murderers. The Court struck down a 2018 ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) ruling to arrive at this tortured conclusion.

It’s interesting that this case didn’t arise in a 2nd Amendment challenge, but, “rather, it is one of several cases this term seeking to undercut the power of administrative agencies.” It’s an attack on the ability of government to govern effectively, to not only limit government, but cripple its basic functions. Their aim is to limit the protective reach of US government agencies, yet they say this is not ideologically driven. The case was brought by Texas gun store owner Michael Cargill, after he was forced to surrender two bump stocks in 2019. The issue was whether the Trump administration, through the ATF stretched the statutory definition of machine guns too far to cover bump stocks. 

Chief Justice John Roberts has set the stage for this ideological tilt, and “done everything he can to try to manipulate the process to avoid and block efforts by the Senate to hold the court accountable, to insist that it abide by just commonsense ethical rules that every other court in the country has to follow.” Sondra Sotomayor articulated the objections in a rare public dissent from the Bench. She summarized saying, “This is not a hard case. All of the textual evidence points to the same interpretation. Its interpretation requires six diagrams and an animation to decipher the meaning of the statutory text, and enables gun users and manufacturers to circumvent federal law.”

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