Quote of the Day
SCOTUS’s current practice of deciding like 50 cases a year may have worked in a system where the lower courts acted in good faith. SCOTUS would decide Bruen, and then lower courts would do their best to faithfully apply it.
Instead, the antigun circuits almost always find a way to rule against the Second Amendment except on the specific issues SCOTUS has decided. The Ninth Circuit is now on its 10th en banc to reverse a pro-2A panel ruling.
Sure, maybe SCOTUS will take the occasional case like Wolford and correct a particularly egregious ruling. But the Ninth Circuit’s antigun majority knows there is no way SCOTUS will grant cert to every antigun ruling, or even a large minority of them. So they’ll keep doing what they are doing, and so what if a few get reversed. Most won’t.
To actually correct this, SCOTUS needs to go back to deciding many more cases each year, or alternatively, issue short and curt summary reversals very liberally.
For example, when the Ninth Circuit (probably) upholds the handgun roster’s MDM and CLI requirements, the Supreme Court shouldn’t need a full cert grant and briefing to explain why that is wrong. A one page per curiam saying there is no historical tradition of such “feature” requirements, and California can’t ban popular handguns, would suffice.
Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X, December 30, 2025
I would be interested to see what would happen if SCOTUS returned a one page per curium within minutes of when one of these outrageous decisions were punted up to them. An automated AI system could easily do it. If the autopen was good enough for Biden, then an AI should be good enough for SCOTUS, right? Would the lower courts continue playing these games? Or would they start Calvinballing it?
I’m inclined to believe we will not get 2nd Amendment justice until people are prosecuted.
Another thing that might help is if SCOTUS started issuing final judgments rather than just remanding things to the dishonest lower courts. I guess that happens occasionally but it should happen more often.
Congress needs to fulfill their Constitution duties and impeach and remove federal judges who rule in an unconstitutional manner.
Impeachment is a paper tiger and will never happen. Nor will Congress act against rouge courts.
Here is the key part of the Constitution. “The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour”. Good behaviour (absurd British spelling) is not defined. There has been an assumption that only Congress via the impeachment process can determine this. However, the Constitution doesn’t say that. A reasonable definition of bad behavior is open defiance of the rulings of a higher court. Under this definition, the Supreme Court could remove such judges. I don’t have any illusion that the current court would do that since they are more attuned to process than rights but some hypothetical future court might do so. We are faced with a judicial insurrection and not just regarding the 2A. Judges seem to think they are in charge of everything. In an attempt to enlist JS, I will note that a Hawaiian judge (ha) just ruled that the Hawaii tax on cruise ships, passed to combat global warming was unconstitutional. That is a stupid policy but it is clearly a policy field reserved to the legislature.
“I’m inclined to believe we will not get 2nd Amendment justice until people are prosecuted.”
Yup. Spot on.
They ain’t afraid to prosecute you for spitting on the sidewalk. Driving without a seatbelt, and a million other fractions they throw the book at you for. Or outright murder you over.
And if “ignorance of the law” is never an excuse? Certainly, no judge could wiggle out of a charge for violating people’s basic human rights. (It’s not like there isn’t any evidence. Hell, it’s in their own handwriting.)
The problem is the will to act.
And Trump, Bondi, Patel, congress, nor any of the host of other morons running this country. (Straight into the ground, I might add.) ever will.
Their outright refusal to do so is how empires die.
We will be no different.
There is no real penalty for a Judge to rule from the bench like an absolute dictator. The worst that can happen to them is they get impeached – which simply isn’t going to happen to a Democrat.