Not to beat a dead horse, but the “government” has no obligation to protect you. None. No matter what the proglodytes say about public safety, no one has to protect you. Heck, they don’t even have to figure out who attacked or killed you. There’s no right to either, but they don’t tell you that when they do everything they can think of to make it impossible for you to protect yourself.
The most obvious affront to this double standard is firearms. The left loves them when they control the force monopoly (police, local or federal agents, the military) but hate them when they don’t. Civilian ownership is verboten in either case. They don’t have to protect you, but you can’t be permitted to protect yourself. Self-defense is a crime, so we can’t pretend to be surprised about liberal enclaves banning anything you might use to that end.
Stun guns, tasers, and knives often end up in the sights of elected Dems and their army of regulators. Tools adopted when firearms are regulated out of use for everyone but criminals. But the Demorrhoids don’t want you to have those either. New York City banned them, and plaintiffs who sued have yet to find redress. The Second Circuit announced in its three-judge decision that “No reasonable jury could return a verdict that stun guns and Tasers are presumptively protected by the Second Amendment.”
Something is coming this July...
Tell that to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Far from anywhere near center, let alone right, the Bay State’s High Court ruled unanimously that the ban on “electronic weapons” violated the Second Amendment. The ban was vacated, and the state (Massachusetts!) went about regulating tasers and stun guns. Burdensome still, but possession was no longer prohibited.
The Second Circuit’s ruling upholding the NYC ban opens the door to bans in Connecticut and Vermont. The former has a byzantine confluence of regulations meant to make wanting to own one difficult, while the latter allows civilian ownership if you are 18 or older. But the Second Circuit has suggested that the Bruen test doesn’t apply, inviting outright bans.
{Dave Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute] told the Daily Signal that the 2nd Circuit’s ruling conflicts with the Bruen standard.
The Bruen standard ought to be a simple test, Kopel claimed. “The proper approach would be just to say: Are the weapons in question, like stun guns, are they arms? And is this a restriction on people using them?”
“If the answer to that is yes, then you proceed to step two, where you look at that law in light of history and tradition,” Kopel said.
The Proglodytes are likely to say that the founders could never have imagined tasers and stun guns, but they couldn’t have imagined the internet either. That doesn’t change your First Amendment right to free speech and press. The restraint on government is based on the exercise, not the tool. People who cannot read or write still have First Amendment protections, as do speakers who use a soapbox, a printing press, or a digital platform.
Your right to self-defense is not confined to lethal force, and there is no historical tradition of restricting non-lethal weapons, including the ones God gave you. Women have the right to fend off rapists, but in NYC they are prohibited from using tasers or stun guns. They are permitted to use pepper spray, but its volume and strength are regulated. That leaves fists, car keys, a quick boot to the groin, and lots of yelling, but that’s not terribly effective.
A taser or stun gun would be better; a loaded firearm even more so. There were over 3400 reported rapes in NYC in 2025, a number that has been rising. This ruling won’t help, and remember, the city has no obligation to protect women or find those who assault them. Them or anyone else.
If more people knew this, perhaps the “feeling” that armed citizens are a danger would begin to shift, especially those armed with non-lethal force tools.
I’d argue that the pepper spray restrictions are ripe for a challenge as well, but you need money, lawyers, or one of the pro bono liberty outfits to see a clear path to getting it overturned, possibly across an entire Circuit Court jurisdiction or nationwide if SCOTUS takes it up, and you win.
As with the assholes in Nashua, they don’t care if they are wrong and know it; they’ll make you sue them and maybe get lucky like NYC did in the Second Circuit.
