If This So-Called Expert Thinks SCOTUS Has Screwed Up Gun Laws, Then Court Doing It Right

August 25, 2026
6:12 am

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The Supreme Court’s recent gun-rights decisions have done exactly what the Founders intended—reined in decades of judicial and legislative overreach that treated the Second Amendment like a second-class right. Adam Winkler’s hand-wringing about “chaos” and “uncertainty” is little more than the predictable lament of an academic who prefers policy outcomes over constitutional text. When the Court struck down New York’s discretionary “may-issue” permitting scheme in Bruen, it didn’t create disorder; it restored the baseline that law-abiding citizens enjoy a presumptive right to carry. Winkler’s complaint that lower courts are now “confused” is really an admission that they can no longer reflexively uphold every gun-control measure that crosses their desks. What Winkler frames as judicial recklessness is, in reality, a long-overdue course correction. For nearly a century, courts hid behind interest-balancing tests that let them weigh away constitutional rights whenever a legislature claimed public-safety benefits. Bruen replaced that subjective calculus with a history-and-tradition standard that forces judges to ask a straightforward question: does this restriction have roots in the Founding era or Reconstruction? If the answer is no, the restriction falls. That approach may unsettle law-review syllabi, but it protects citizens from the ever-shifting policy preferences of whichever party controls the statehouse. For the broader 2A community, the message is clear: victories at the Supreme Court are not finish lines but starting blocks. States determined to keep their permitting regimes are already testing the edges of Bruen with new “sensitive-place” maps and novel training mandates. Grass-roots litigation, state-level legislation, and relentless public education will be required to keep the lower courts honest. Winkler’s critique inadvertently highlights why that work matters—because the default setting in this country is still that millions of ordinary Americans must petition the government for permission to exercise a enumerated constitutional right. The Court has begun to dismantle that permission-slip regime; the rest is up to us.

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What Winkler frames as judicial recklessness is, in reality, a long-overdue course correction. For nearly a century, courts hid behind interest-balancing tests that let them weigh away constitutional rights whenever a legislature claimed public-safety benefits. Bruen replaced that subjective calculus with a history-and-tradition standard that forces judges to ask a straightforward question: does this restriction have roots in the Founding era or Reconstruction? If the answer is no, the restriction falls. That approach may unsettle law-review syllabi, but it protects citizens from the ever-shifting policy preferences of whichever party controls the statehouse.

For the broader 2A community, the message is clear: victories at the Supreme Court are not finish lines but starting blocks. States determined to keep their permitting regimes are already testing the edges of Bruen with new “sensitive-place” maps and novel training mandates. Grass-roots litigation, state-level legislation, and relentless public education will be required to keep the lower courts honest. Winkler’s critique inadvertently highlights why that work matters—because the default setting in this country is still that millions of ordinary Americans must petition the government for permission to exercise a enumerated constitutional right. The Court has begun to dismantle that permission-slip regime; the rest is up to us.

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