I've been one of those unfortunate souls who, for a time, relied on public transportation to get to many places in my community. My hometown isn't a walkable city by any stretch, and my job was on the other side of town at the time. I've been on buses, and I know why many people won't use them.
And that's without people being stabbed to death for no reason, like what happened in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Seriously, having to take the bus was low-grade trauma-inducing, and I don't use the word "trauma" to mean just something I didn't really like very much. I'm not a Skittle-haired leftist, after all.
Back then, I didn't carry a gun much. These days, though, I do, and in a lot of places, public buses and trains are off-limits. One of those is Illinois.
However, if the Firearms Policy Coalition is successful with its latest effort, it won't be that way anywhere for long:
Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today that a petition for a writ of certiorari has been filed with the Supreme Court of the United States in Schoenthal v. Raoul, an FPC-backed lawsuit asking the Court to overturn the Seventh Circuit’s dangerous decision upholding Illinois’s ban on carrying firearms on public transportation. The appellate court's ruling, the petition explains, shreds the clear command of the Constitution and defies the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment precedents.
The Seventh Circuit wrongly declared that buses and trains are “sensitive places” where Illinois can disarm peaceable people by decree. But the right to bear arms for self-defense does not vanish the moment a citizen boards a bus or subway. Millions of Americans rely on public transportation every day—and they don’t surrender their rights when they do. The Supreme Court’s review is urgently needed to restore clarity, reaffirm the Constitution, and end the lower courts’ retreat from fundamental liberties.
Let's also understand that prohibiting guns on public transportation doesn't just disarm working poor people who rely on that public transportation to exist in many of our cities; it also disarms them pretty much everywhere else they go in that city.
They can't carry to or from the bus or train station. They can't carry while conducting any of their errands while using the bus or train to travel within their community. They can't carry to or from home when they're using public transportation.
They are, essentially, completely and totally disarmed for almost any situation that involves leaving their house, even if they have a concealed carry permit for their state.
That seems to go well beyond the Supreme Court's prior support for "sensitive places," at least as it discussed in the NYSRPA v. Bruen decision. And honestly, I think the fact that it forcibly disarmed millions of Americans in almost all aspects of their day-to-day lives, no matter where they want to go, is why, especially considering Barack Obama completely screwed up the used car market for generations to come, making it much harder for people to afford a decent used car in some places.
Here's hoping the Supreme Court lowers the boom on Illinois and every other state with this kind of idiotic law on the books.
