Subject: Re: Background Checks
We're screwed by an extremist partisan SCOTUS that will assure lots of bloody 2A headlines for a long time.

I don't think SCOTUS is the body primarily responsible for lots of bloody 2A headlines.

SCOTUS' recent precedent does make it unlikely that any serious legislative efforts to control firearms would be found unconstitutional. But the federal government hasn't even attempted any serious legislative efforts to control firearms. At all. Whatever point you think was the furthest that federal legislation got towards addressing firearm deaths (maybe the assault weapons ban in the 1990's?), it was the merest moiety of a molehill relative to the causes of firearm deaths - the huge number of non-assault weapon firearms throughout the country, especially handguns.

The same is true of even state legislation. While a handful of cities went so far as to all-but-ban private ownership of handguns (New York, DC), no state has ever come close to adopting legislation that could meaningfully reduce gun deaths. Even some of the strictest regulations, like those of California, still allow guns to be obtained with ease and volume that is unthinkable in most other Western developed countries. Not even the most restrictive state wants to impose any real, serious obstacles in the path of law-abiding citizens buying as many handguns as they want. Which makes meaningfully reducing gun deaths all-but-impossible.

I don't think it's all that meaningful that SCOTUS has now blocked legislation that would never get adopted. The bottleneck was upstream from them. Some minor, marginal legislation might end up falling to their jurisprudence - limited to the point of inutility by its scope (assault weapon bans) and/or geography (municipal bans in Chicago or NYC, surrounded by thriving gun markets in Illinois and New York state).

We're awash in guns because of our political choices, not SCOTUS.