January 1, Sotomayor’s Armed Guard Foils Carjacker: Irony in Second Amendment Dissent?

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor benefits from the protection of armed guards. Despite rejecting the concept of a “private right of armed self-defense.” In 2010, Sotomayor joined a dissent in McDonald v. Chicago. Arguing against characterizing the Second Amendment as “fundamental” for private self-defense.

Recently, one of Sotomayor’s armed guards shot a would-be carjacker outside her home. According to a news report, the incident took place on July 5, 2024. 18-year-old Kenneth Flowers allegedly pointed a gun at a U.S. Marshal assigned to protect the justice. The Marshal subsequently opened fire, leaving Flowers with non-life-threatening wounds.

In the McDonald decision, the Supreme Court found that Second Amendment rights are incorporated via the Fourteenth Amendment. However, in their dissent, Justices Breyer, Ginsberg, and Sotomayor claimed, “I can find nothing in the Second Amendment’s text, history, or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as ‘fundamental’ insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes.”

The dissenting justices also argued that there is no popular consensus on the private self-defense right described in Heller being fundamental. They concluded, “In sum, the Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self-defense. There has been, and is, no consensus that the right is, or was, ‘fundamental.’”

Despite these views, Sotomayor enjoys armed protection. While dismissing the notion that the Second Amendment exists to protect the People’s “private right to self-defense.”

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