The Volokh Conspiracy

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Volokh Conspiracy

Gorsuch appointment looks like a win for gun-rights supporters

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Then-Judge Neil Gorsuch hadn't written anything squarely dealing with the Second Amendment when he was nominated to the Supreme Court; and while it seemed likely that he'd take a relatively broad view of gun rights (just based on his being a conservative, in an era when conservative jurists tend to lean in that direction), that was just a guess. We now have more evidence, from his vote joining Justice Clarence Thomas's dissent from denial of certiorari in Peruta v. California—he, like Thomas (and, before his death, Justice Antonin Scalia), seems to be a strong gun-rights supporter, indeed likely more so than some of the other conservative justices. Like it (as I do) or not, but that's the information we now have.