Supreme Court Case Could OBLITERATE All Forms Of Gun Control w/ Elie Mystal

The interpretation of the Second Amendment has changed dramatically over the past several decades. Beginning with hardliner NRA member's taking over of the organization in the 1970s to the 2008 Supreme Court decision that says the Second Amendment is put in place as a personal defense mechanism in the Constitution. Antonin Scalia codified that the Second Amendment is meant as a right to arm yourself against criminals. Now a case from New York may obliterate the government's ability to put any gun control measure in place. This interview previously aired on Peacock on August 16, 2021. Sam Seder discusses the Supreme Court's radical interpretation of the Second Amendment with The Nation's Justice Correspondent Elie Mystal. https://bit.ly/2UEFM5p @Peacock We stream our live show every day at 12 PM ET. We need your help to keep providing free videos! Support the Majority Report's video content by going to https://bit.ly/3j23y4C Watch the Majority Report live M–F at 12 p.m. EST at youtube.com/samseder or listen via daily podcast at https://bit.ly/3szmLxE Download our FREE app: https://bit.ly/3AYhClO SUPPORT the show by becoming a member: https://bit.ly/382kkdB We Have Merch!!! https://bit.ly/3sBBPuB LIKE us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/38hwIqp FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MajorityFM SUBSCRIBE to us on YouTube: http://youtube.com/SamSeder Sam Seder: As folks know we have a 6-3 conservative majority on the supreme court. Over the course of the past well even less than two decades, the court has moved considerably to I guess one could say the right. In its sense of the constitutionality of people carrying firearms in this country and just how sacrosanct of a right that is. Joining me now is Elie Mystal he is the justice writer for The Nation magazine. He’s written a fascinating piece on a fascinating development asking the question of why are public defenders backing a major assault on gun control. Elie welcome to the program. did I get your title at the nation right? Elie Mystal: I think the official one is just as correspondent as justice correspondent international man of mystery. Sam: There you are. Ellie, I mentioned before we started to record here that I found your piece to be fascinating. Exceptionally well written. And the issue itself is fascinating. Both in a legal sense and in a just sort of a societal sense and also from a political standpoint which I want to touch on as well. But first, let's just start giving people a little bit of a primer of where we are in terms of the ascension I guess of the second amendment. That has really only taken place and I don't think people fully realize appreciate this we're only about 15 years out from when the right to carry an arm became an individual right in this country. Mystal: Yeah, so just to set the stage here in general over the course of our lifetimes the Supreme Court has gone further and further and further to the hard right in terms of gun liberation law. While the country as a whole has steadily moved quite leftist towards supporting kind of reasonable gun regulations. So you've got you to know background checks for instance are you know polling at some of their highest levels. Ever while the court itself is moving further and further right on this issue. The key here has been the ascension of the NRA’s interpretation of the second amendment. Now this is new it's new in terms of like that this was not how anybody talked about the second amendment back in the 1960s let's say. Right? It was really there was if you go into NRA history there was a revolt in Cincinnati you know it was when the hardliners took over the NRA from the inside out in the mid-70s that this new interpretation of the second amendment started to get you to know to get wings. And that new interpretation which I can't emphasize enough is not how the amendment was interpreted constitutionally for the entirety of our history, was that gun ownership is an individual personal right that we get from the constitution so that we can defend ourselves from criminals. That is again new. The original second amendment was thought to be something to protect ourselves from tyranny it was thought to be something so that we could arm state militias which were you know and I don't want to be controversial here but state militias just so happen to be critically important to put down slave revolts in the early country. That's why the second amendment is there. So that the militias were not going to be controlled by the federal government the anti-slave potentially federal government and could be still controlled by the pro-slave states so they could raise their militias and put down revolts. That's why it's their folks. But from the 70s on the NRA has been pushing this individual right to bear arms individual rights fair arms.