Security guards with guns drawn keep Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor safe, even though she dissented from the ruling in McDonald v. Chicago (2010), calling for “a private right of armed self-defense.”
Outside Sotomayor’s house in July, one of her armed guards shot an attempted carjacker.
The New York Post reports that on July 5, 2024, just after 1:00 a.m., the incident took place. When 18-year-old Kenneth Flowers reportedly brandished a pistol at a U.S. Marshal assigned to safeguard the court system, the Marshal opened fire, inflicting non-life-threatening injuries on Flowers.
The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) concluded in the five-to-four McDonald decision that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates Second Amendment rights.
In addition to writing the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito also authored two dissents. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote one dissenting opinion, while Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the other. Notably, Justices Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg joined Breyer.
“I cannot see anything in the language, history, or underlying reasoning of the Second Amendment that may merit defining it as ‘basic’ inasmuch as it tries to preserve the keeping and carrying of guns for private self-defense reasons,” said Breyer, Ginsberg, and Sotomayor.
“Further, there is no broad agreement that the private self-defense right recognized in Heller is essential,” Breyer, Ginsberg, and Sotomayor emphasized later in their dissent, following their criticism of a previous Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008).
Breyer, Ginsberg, and Sotomayor said early in the dissent’s conclusion that “in sum, the Framers did not create the Second Amendment in order to safeguard a private right of armed self-defense.” The idea that the right is or was “basic” has never gained acceptance.
While dismissing arguments that the Second Amendment protects the people’s “private right to self-defense,” Sotomayor appreciates having protection from the law.
These are the arguments that offend myself as a private citizen,for Gov. officials laws are for thee not for me.
Self defense is a right that our Fore Fathers granted us to protect ourselves from , any threat Foreign or Domestic. All People do not have Secret Service Protection . We are sometimes to far away from Law Enforcement to rely on them. By the time law enforcement gets there , they do nothing but zip up the deceased person in a body bag and do a investigation into who did it . But that dosent and they can’t save the Dead .
She has armed security guarding her who had to shoot a guy right in front if her home. Yet she is opposed to our ability to defend ourselves. I wonder if in their massive spending bills – will they provide Secret Service protection for each and everyone of.our homes too?