Leftist Law Professors Tell Police to Use Immunity from Prosecution to Confiscate Guns

Once again, we see that liberals only like the law for the cover it can afford them to push their anti-American agenda. This time a group of leftist law professors are urging cops to break the law, but to use their immunity from prosecution to do it.

Police have what is called “qualified immunity.” This doctrine is supposed to shield them from malicious prosecution from incidents when they are conducting their jobs. For instance, they can’t be sued personally if someone is injured during an arrest, etc.

But now these leftist “law” professors are telling cops to hide behind their qualified immunity as they engage in the left’s favorite pastime of attacking the Second Amendment of the United States.

As Bearing Arms notes: “In a forthcoming paper in the Notre Dame Law Review Reflection, Prof. Guha Krishnamurthi (University of Oklahoma College of Law) and Prof. Peter Salib (University of Houston Law Center) call for the abuse of Qualified Immunity to confiscate guns.”

QUALIFIED IMMUNITY AS GUN CONTROL

The Supreme Court’s ruling in NYSRPA v. Bruen threw the political project of gun regulation into question. Before Bruen, states could enact new kinds of gun restrictions if they passed a relatively stringent means-ends test. That is, if laws meaningfully reduced danger, while not too heavily burdening the right to self-defense, they were allowed. After Bruen, only gun controls actually in force in the founding era, and their close analogues, are permissible. Many fewer regulations will now pass the constitutional test.

Here, we suggest an unlikely source of continuing power, after Bruen, for states to disarm individuals they deem dangerous: qualified immunity. Qualified immunity shields state officers from monetary liability for many constitutional violations. […] Thus, a state law enforcement officer may, after Bruen, confiscate an individual’s firearm if the officer deems that person too dangerous to possess it. The officer’s justifications may conflict with the federal courts’ understanding of Bruen or the Second Amendment—perhaps flagrantly. But unless a previous, authoritative legal decision examining near-identical facts says so, the officer risks no liability. And because each individual act of disarmament will be unique, such prior decisions will be vanishingly rare. The result is a surprisingly free hand for states to determine who should and should not be armed, even in contravention of the Supreme Court’s dictates.

So, the left is pushing cops to abuse their power to further their anti-American agenda.

Let’s recap: Leftists hate cops and hate it when they abuse their power… unless those same cops are abusing their power to push a left-wing agenda.

Leftists hate rules and laws unless they can use those laws and rules to further their agenda.

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Tags: Commentary