Opinion
New York – Let us dispense with the pleasantries.
The United States Supreme Court’s handling of Second Amendment cases is not “confusing,” not “complicated,” and not the product of innocent happenstance. It is, rather, the predictable output of discretionary power being used to avoid decisive confrontation with state defiance of the Court’s own landmark rulings.
And in that avoidance, the Second Amendment is being bled—slowly, methodically, and with a degree of institutional self-protection that should alarm every citizen who understands what the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms is, and what it is for.
This companion article is necessarily short. The full argument is set forth in our original Arbalest Quarrel article, (Chief Justice Roberts Is Strangling The Life Out Of The Second Amendment) which we urge you to read in full. But the essentials are plain enough, and they must be stated plainly.
The Battle Is Not Only In The Merits—It Is In The Docket
Most Americans do not understand that the Supreme Court is not a forum of automatic justice.
The Court selects what it will hear. It grants or denies petitions for writs of certiorari at its discretion. And although Supreme Court Rule 10 pretends to supply a neutral architecture for that discretion, the reality is that Rule 10 functions as a judicial escape hatch—a convenient justification for declining the very cases that demand intervention.
In no domain is this more destructive than in Second Amendment litigation.
If the Court refuses to take the cases that matter, then Heller, McDonald, and Bruen become museum pieces—praised as “historic” while states openly devise end-runs around them in real time.
A Right that cannot be enforced is not a Right in any serious sense. It is a slogan.
The “Rule Of Four” Is Real—But The Strategy Is Realer
We discuss at length in the original article the Supreme Court’s so-called “Rule of Four”—the traditional practice that four Justices may grant certiorari.
This is not a trivial procedural detail. It is supposed to preserve the integrity of the Court’s appellate function by ensuring that a substantial minority may bring a matter before the Court for decision on the merits.
But in Second Amendment cases, the deeper reality is this:
Those Justices who cherish the Natural Law Right codified in the Second Amendment do not, as a general matter, vote to grant review unless they believe they have the votes to win.
And those who detest the Right will happily grant review when they believe they have five votes to shred it.
This is why docket selection is not “administration.” It is warfare by another name.
Wolford Was Granted—Antonyuk & Snope Were Denied—And That Is The Story
Many in the pro-Second Amendment community have greeted the Supreme Court’s decision to grant review in Wolford v. Lopez with optimism.
That optimism is misplaced.
Wolford, while not insignificant, is not the decisive confrontation the moment requires. It involves a narrow question within the larger “sensitive places” framework—yet the framework itself is the threat.
The fundamental question is whether the states may “approve” public carry in theory while rendering it impossible in practice by declaring ordinary life a latticework of forbidden zones.
That is the post-Bruen strategy. And it is precisely why Antonyuk v. James mattered.
Antonyuk Was The Direct Challenge To State Defiance Of Bruen
New York lost Bruen on “proper cause.”
And then New York, enraged and defiant, acted exactly as a hostile government acts when it is told “No” by the Constitution: it searched for a loophole—then built an entire statutory architecture to exploit it.
The “sensitive places” scheme was not incidental. It was deliberate. It was crafted to erase Bruen without admitting it was erasing Bruen.
If the Supreme Court were serious about being the guardian and interpreter of the Constitution, Antonyuk should have been granted review.
The Court denied review.
That denial was not meaningless. It was a signal.
Snope Was A Vehicle For The “Common Use” Question The Court Keeps Dodging
Maryland’s Snope case sits in the same universe as the recurring semiautomatic ban cases—the question of whether arms in common use may be forbidden because the political class has adopted the dishonest phrase “assault weapon.”
We have seen this pattern before.
Friedman v. Highland Park should have been granted. It was denied. And ever since, the states have interpreted silence as permission to continue probing and pushing.
If the Court refuses to settle the “common use” question with clarity and force, then the states will continue filing into the void.
Roberts Is Not “One Of Nine” In Practice
Many people speak as if the Chief Justice is merely a vote.
That is naïve.
The Chief Justice sets tone. The Chief Justice influences what is encouraged, what is discouraged, what is slowed, what is contained, and what is treated as “too hot” for the Court to touch.
- Landmark rulings exist.
- States defy them.
- The Court refuses to take the best cases to stop the defiance.
- The Right is left to be strangled by delay, litigation costs, and sabotage by lower courts.
One does not need mind-reading to infer intention when behavior repeats itself with consistency.
Public Safety Is Not Personal Safety—And Government Knows It
One of the most important realities—rarely spoken aloud by officials, and almost never pressed by reporters—is that “public safety” and “personal safety” are not the same thing.
The government insists it provides “public safety.”
But the individual is responsible for personal safety, because the government is not generally legally obligated to protect you as an individual.
This is why armed self-defense is not a hobby, not a lifestyle marker, and not a political pose.
Because an armed citizen is not a subject. He is a sovereign.
Do Not Confuse A Narrow Grant With A Broad Awakening
Do not misread Wolford as proof the Court has “turned a corner.”
The cases that would have forced the Court to confront the true post-Bruen crisis were denied.
That is the controlling fact.
A Court that will not take the cases that matter most is not protecting the Second Amendment. It is managing it.
Read More as We Make The Case for SCOTUS Avoidance in Depth
This short companion cannot carry the full structure of the argument. The original Arbalest Quarrel article develops it at length.
Read it. Share it. And do not allow yourself to be lulled by procedure.
The destruction of rights in America is accomplished by attrition—by delay—and by the refusal to enforce what has already been declared.
And that is why this matters now.
About The Arbalest Quarrel:
Arbalest Group created The Arbalest Quarrel website to educate the American public about Federal and State firearms control legislation.
For more information, visit: www.arbalestquarrel.com
