Giffords Adviser: SCOTUS Makes it Easier for People to Be Mass Shooters

Giffords adviser Ryan Busse claims the Supreme Court of the United State’s Bruen (2022) decision is making it “much easier” for “a trouble 18-year-old to become a deadly mass shooter.”

The Bruen decision was handed down June 23, 2022, and Breitbart News reported it struck down New York’s proper cause requirement for concealed carry permit issuance.

Busse’s column, published in The Atlantic December 14, 2022, summarized a portion of Justice Clarence Thomas’s Bruen opinion: 

Thomas made clear that, henceforth, the Court’s conservative majority would judge all firearms regulations by a new originalist standard: If there is no historical proof of a gun law linked to 1791 or 1868—the years when the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, respectively, were ratified—then any modern law restricting firearms is liable to be ruled unconstitutional.

Busse (pictured) then lamented that Bruen is being utilized by pro-Second Amendment groups around the country to file suits against current, longstanding gun controls. They listed court decisions against gun control in Texas, West Virginia, and New York, and expressed angst that Bruen has created a paradigm where the background check system–which was not put in place until 1998–will be struck down.

He described the Second Amendment supporters as “an unrepresentative, radical pro-gun minority of Americans whose vocal demands about their right to bear arms have found sympathetic ears on the Supreme Court.”

Busse warns, “The justices will be forced to decide whether we are to be a country that must allow armed citizens in every grocery store, church, or park. They will be forced to decide whether we must expand the right of open carry to every state in the nation including its largest metropolises, with all the potential for mayhem that portends.”

He did not mention that Texas became the 46th open carry state in the Union in 2021.

Breitbart News noted that Gov. Henry McMasters (R) signed legislation on May 17, 2021, allowing concealed carry permit holders to carry their handguns openly, if they so choose.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a PhD in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.