Blue States Should Go TRAP Shooting

We talked about yesterday's big SCOTUS decision on states being able to determine their own laws for sports betting and how that could open the door to challenging the Trump regime's position on states banning sanctuary cities, but there was actually another big SCOTUS move from Monday and that involved whether or not there's a Second Amendment right to sell guns.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to endorse a constitutional right to sell firearms, rejecting an appeal by three men who were denied a permit to open a gun store in northern California.

The justices, without comment Monday, left intact a federal appeals court decision that said the Second Amendment doesn’t protect the rights of would-be firearm sellers. The lower court also said potential customers could buy guns elsewhere.

It’s the third time this year the court has rejected an appeal from California gun-rights advocates. The court hasn’t heard arguments in a Second Amendment case in eight years.

The men, led by John Teixeira, sought to open their store about five miles south of Oakland in Alameda County.

In denying the permit, county officials said the proposed store didn’t comply with a local ordinance because it was less than 500 feet from residential properties.

The San Francisco-based appeals court said residents could shop at 10 other gun stores in the county, including one about 600 feet away from the proposed site.

Now, if these arguments sound somewhat familiar, replace "firearm access" with "abortion access" and as the Daily Banter's Justin Rosario points out, you have TRAP laws, which the Supreme Court has found to be legal. So how about TRAP laws for limiting gun stores?

It's unclear that the original regulation was designed with this outcome in mind but it's not hard to see the possibilities and we have Republicans to thank for paving the legal road for us. They've spent the last several years creating TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws designed specifically to put abortion clinics out of business. There's absolutely no reason the same can't be done to anyone that wants to sell guns. 

Here's a brief list of ways to make guns sales safer: 

• Any location selling guns must have a full time trauma surgeon and nurse on staff at all times.
• Any location selling guns must be within 2 miles of a hospital.
• Any location selling guns must have all staff fully certified as EMTs.
• Any location selling guns must have very expensive insurance to cover loss of life in case of an accidental shooting.
• Any location selling guns must be a full functioning ambulatory surgical center in case the wound is too severe to move the victim.

This will, naturally, outrage the NRA and their mindless army of ammosexuals but so what? They have their precious right to own as many guns as they want. They'll just have to travel to get them. They thought this was a great idea when it came to punishing women and stripping them of their reproductive rights so they don't get to start crying about tyranny now. 

It's true that there are versions of this already in effect in cities like Chicago but this is how states like New York or California could make simply eliminate gun stores statewide and it would be 100% legal because, hilariously, this is essentially a state's rights issue in which states have the right to decide what kinds of businesses will be allowed to operate within their borders and under what kinds of restrictions. Watching the pro-Confederacy yahoos argue that states don't have the right to regulate within their borders is going to be amazing.

Now I want to know how legally viable this is, because I truly think California and New York should, well, shoot for the moon on this.

We'll see.  But blue states regulating gun stores the way red states regulate abortion clinics would be incredible.