This is an election update of an article first posted on June 25, 2022. Most people in this country no longer understand our Constitution. Not only do they not understand what it says, but, why it says what it says, why it is the greatest governmental document in history and that it must be defended at all cost. June's Supreme Court decision striking down New York's restrictive gun control laws and the July's Federal Court decision to enjoin Colorado's “Assault Gun” Ban in Boulder County puts the Constitution on center stage. Issues in our country, like gun control, are placed by politicians and the media into 'political narratives' based on political leanings. Those narratives do not represent the issue, they represent at best a portion of the issue that serves a specific political purpose. In this case, the gun control folks want to eliminate guns, so they make everything revolve around the existence of guns. Supporters of the Second Amendment revolve around the narrative that gun control attacks law abiding citizens. Both sides' political narratives are being highlighted in the 2022 mid-term election. Starting with the Constitution is the ONLY way to present the issue of guns in modern America in the proper perspective. Our Constitution was written to limit the government, not the people.  Rights are not provided to the people by government.  They are given by nature & nature's God and not to be unduly restricted by government, for obvious tyrannical reasons. That is also why our rights are a small list, because a longer list would include those whimsical and changing desires of man and government. Our Founders understood this.  When it comes to speech, religion, search & seizure, and 'bearing arms', this is a critically important concept to understand. The Court's opinion on New York's gun control laws stated that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms should not be held to a lower standard than other constitutional rights. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said New York’s requirement that gun owners show “proper cause” to carry a weapon outside the home for self-defense violates the Constitution’s guarantee of gun rights."We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense," Thomas wrote. Breyer acknowledged that use of guns for hunting, target practice and self-defense is widespread and legitimate, but said states should have wide latitude to create schemes that respect those uses while mitigating the threat of weapons circulating widely.Breyer’s dissent is replete with facts and figures about mushrooming gun violence in the U.S. and includes explicit references to some of the most recent mass shootings including the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 people dead and another at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., in which 10 people were killed. In a solo concurrence, Justice Samuel Alito mocked much of Breyer’s recitation of the dangers of gun violence, calling it irrelevant to the issue of what rules states can impose to get a permit to carry a gun outside the home.“Why, for example, does the dissent think it is relevant to recount the mass shootings that have occurred in recent years?,” Alito wrote. “Does the dissent think that laws like New York’s prevent or deter such atrocities? Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home? And how does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator.” One question from this decision is what other states will this ruling affect. Chief Justice John Roberts, suggested it would affect only six states other than New York (California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey & Rhode Island) because they, too, put the onus on a gun owner to justify issuance of a permit. The real Constitutional issue. Interesting that the media and political narrative around this decision says that this ruling eliminates all restrictions to gun ownership & use.  It does not. “The Court’s decision does not prohibit States from imposing licensing requirements for carrying a handgun for self-defense,” Kavanaugh emphasized in a brief concurring opinion Roberts joined. Heller made clear that restrictions on carrying guns in "sensitive places" is permissible.   The Supreme Court revolutionized Second Amendment law with its 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which ruled that the Constitution protected an individual right, not tied to militia service, for law-abiding people to keep guns in their homes for self-defense.The decision contained a famous proviso that appeared to allow many kinds of gun control laws.“Nothing in our opinion,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority, “should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”Nor, he wrote, “does our analysis suggest the invalidity of laws regulating the storage of firearms to prevent accidents.”Justice Scalia, who died in 2016, added that laws banning “dangerous and unusual weapons” were “another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms.” He gave an example: “M16 rifles and the like.” Another narrative is how violence will increase immediately.  ‘We won’t have any sleep’: Mayor of New York City reacts to court ruling. Interesting to note that NYC's violence is already at critical levels with existing gun laws in place. And, the rulng does not immediately change NY gun laws. The Supreme Court has ruled that New York’s law governing the carrying of handguns is unconstitutional, but the law is not yet off the books.The case will now be sent back to a lower court — the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit — which is expected to send it back to Federal District Court in New York, said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California. As various states move to pass controversial new gun control laws after the decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, one such law was enjoined in July by a federal court in Colorado. Judge Moore held that “the Court is sympathetic to the Town’s stated reasoning. However, the Court is unaware of historical precedent that would permit a governmental entity to entirely ban a type of weapon that is commonly used by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, whether in an individual’s home or in public.” Also in July, The House approved an 'assault weapons' ban supported by 18 vulnerable Democrats. This could not pass the Senate. Predictably, taking advantage of yesterday's mass shooting in Raleigh, NC, Biden urged Congress to 'pass an assault weapons ban'.  The media and Democrat focus on shooting in battleground states, but ignore the majority of such shootings in Chicago & New York. Why? Political narratives are not served by targeting Democrat cities and states. Their is much wrong with this 'assault weapons' narrative, too. The guns in question are not 'assault weapons'. This is a political narrative designed to scare those who do not understand or even own guns and to energize the radical left anti-second amendment Democrat base. That narrative is balanced by the narrative on the right of do not take guns away from law abiding citizens who did not and would not participate in this shooting. Another political narrative about guns is that overwhelming majority of Americans support gun restrictions. National polls like this always over sample the big cities where most of the population lives.  Those populations are overwhelmingly left and want guns eliminated.  If you break this down more finitely, those numbers change as noted below. Voters say they want gun control, but their votes say something different. Densely populated cities can certainly control guns in whatever additional manner that is right with their constituency and the Constitution.  Other states can do the same, more or less restrictively. This provides another reason why the Constitution is critical and the concept of the Electoral College applies.  Isolated majorities cannot be allowed to become a tyrant of their own simply by majority.  Majorities rule, and the people are protected, according to a written Constitution, and within a constitutional republic, not a raw democracy. Gun control and the Constitution are on the ballot in several battleground states for the 2022 mid-term election. Specifically, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania & Wisconsin. There are clear constitutional choices between the candidates in each of these Senate races regarding gun control and the Second Amendment. Governors races in Georgia, Maine, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Michigan & Wisconsin also show sharp divides in support or not for the Second Amendment. Hurray for a legal decision that uphold the Constitution. Let's hope voters in 2022 give the states, not the national government, the ability to write gun laws within the scope of that document.