Law professors argue they have a way around the Second Amendment

Two law professors have an idea for how to circumvent the Supreme Court’s repeated rulings in support of the Second Amendment: use police officers to seize guns of “dangerous” people.

The 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen “threw the political project of gun regulation into question,” Professors Guha Krishnamurthi and Peter Salib wrote in the latest issue of Notre Dame Law Review.

CRIMINALS NEED TO BE LOCKED UP

The scholars are not ready to give up. Instead, they want states to employ an “unlikely source of continuing power.”

“Qualified immunity shields state officers from monetary liability for many constitutional violations,” the scholars wrote. “In short, unless a previous case ‘clearly established,’ with high factual particularity, that the officer’s conduct was unconstitutional, the officer does not pay.”

Under their theory, law enforcement can “confiscate an individual’s firearm if the officer deems that person too dangerous to possess it.” Even if the justifications “conflict” with Bruen and other Second Amendment jurisprudence, the officer “risks no liability.”