The United States Supreme Court reopens on Monday, December 2, and for the first time in almost a decade, the sensitive issue of the right to carry firearms. The new majority of judges, conservative since the two nominations of Donald Trump's candidates, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, is likely to further strengthen the rights of gun owners and guns.
In a country where bullets cause nearly 40,000 deaths a year, including suicides, the high court goes back to the second amendment to the Constitution, which mentions that the law " People " to hold and carry weapons should not be tampered with.
In 2008, in a landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled that this article guaranteed a right to 'Individual'but "Not absolute", to possess a weapon by invalidating a law that prohibited handguns in Washington. In 2010, she said that her decision applied to states as well as to the federal level. "But she did not say how the courts should assess the constitutionality of other regulations, such as the banning of assault rifles, high-capacity magazines or the obligation to conceal weapons", says Joseph Blocher, a law professor at Duke University, North Carolina.
The Supreme Court then systematically dismissed appeals, and some states and municipalities were able to maintain restrictive rules in the name of public safety. This year, for the first time, the high court has agreed to look into limits to the carrying of arms in New York, challenged by an affiliated association to the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) lobby.
"History and traditions"
Proponents of gun control fear that it will take the opportunity to make a decision against their cause. "The plaintiffs push for an extreme interpretation of the Constitution and want to drag the Supreme Court into their dangerous political project: to eliminate all common sense measures on arms", tweeted the organization Moms Demand Action.
These fears are fueled by the replacement of two of the nine sages of the Court since the election of Donald Trump, who had promised during his campaign to choose only judges defending the right to bear arms. One of them, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, "Wrote that weapons laws should be evaluated in terms of texts, history and traditions, not their effectiveness in solving the current problem of gun violence", stresses Joseph Blocher.
It is this deeply reworked court that seized the New York law at the beginning of the year. Adopted in 2013 and validated by the courts, it prohibits the transport of weapons outside the city's shooting booths.
In June, the authorities of the megalopolis amended it in the hope of ending the procedure. As they have satisfied the complainants, they argue that the file is obsolete and ask the Supreme Court to close it. This assumption will be the first point debated at the hearing.
"Hidden behind the corpse of a friend"
The case is generating huge interest in a country where 30% of adults own at least one weapon. About 50 organizations joined the procedure. Donald Trump's government provided support to gun owners in an argument echoing Justice Kavanaugh's thesis.
In the other camp, the March for Our Lives movement, created after the killings in a high school in Parkland, Florida (seventeen dead in March 2018), left the legal arguments to try to reach the judges in the heart.
In about twenty pages, the organization tells the torment of young Americans: one survived a shootout "Hidden behind the corpse of a friend", another was injured in the head by a stray bullet, a third lost a brother in gang violence …
They "Represent the tens of thousands of young people who suffer from gun violence every day and demand that the political class protect them"she writes. "The decision of the Court should not deprive them of their hopes. " If the high court does not judge the case, it will make its decision by June, in the middle of the campaign for the presidential election of 2020.
