By: Michael McCoy & Claire Walker
We express our heartfelt sympathies to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose security detail agents were recently threatened by an attempted carjacker. We are pleased that the Justice was not harmed, and that the suspect has been arrested. More broadly, the incident firmly demonstrates why Second Amendment-protected rights are for all of us as Americans, not just judges. It allows us to defend ourselves from threats and confrontations by others.
Unfortunately, until now, Justice Sotomayor has repeatedly rejected the fundamental right of Americans to keep and bear arms. For instance, in the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago, which held that the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense is applicable to the state and local governments, Justice Sotomayor dissented from the majority opinion, arguing that “nothing in the Second Amendment’s text, history, or underlying rationale … warrant[s] characterizing it as ‘fundamental’ insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes.” Essentially, she concluded that the Constitution does not protect an individual’s right to own a firearm – meaning that any state or city could dispossess law-abiding citizens from owning firearms for self-defense. She has continued to stand firm on her anti-Second Amendment position, and once again dissented in the 2022 case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which held that New York could not arbitrarily deny firearms permits to its citizens.
While Justice Sotomayor and countless other public officials advocate against the Second Amendment rights of Americans, they themselves have security details who are well armed and prepared to defend them with deadly force. The hypocrisy is glaring. It leads one to ask the question, why do public officials and their security have a Second Amendment right but not ordinary Americans. Unfortunately, Justice Sotomayor’s carjacking experience is not an uncommon one. Criminal situations like this happen across the country to everyday American citizens. Yet, public officials reject the idea that ordinary Americans should have the same natural, individual right to keep and bear arms for the defense of themselves and their families. The willingness of public officials to leave their citizens without any means of protection is concerning. This raises a critical question—what should those of us without private security details do when confronted with similar circumstances to those faced by Justice Sotomayor?
The answer is not to leave Americans citizens vulnerable to criminals and criminal conduct. Trying to take away Americans’ fundamental right to possess a gun has repeatedly shown that it only hurts law-abiding citizens. It leaves peaceable Americans defenseless against criminals who will continue to carry a firearm, regardless of what the law says. MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms hopes that this experience convinces Justice Sotomayor that self-defense is a fundamental, individual right, and that all Americans have just as much of a right to be safe as she does. While we may not have a security detail to protect us, we do have the Second Amendment protecting our right to defend ourselves.
