A narrow self-defense ruling was misread to justify dismantling gun safeguards

Evidence

In many states in the past, permission to carry a concealed gun in public required a permit issued by the police department after a thorough background check. The Supreme Court’s narrow ruling in McDonald v. Chicago permitting a gun in the home for self-defense is widely misread as granting absolute gun rights. States rapidly stripped away these public safeguards after a politically driven national gun-rights campaign. These changes created a largely laissez-faire policy toward guns. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1361

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of how narrow legal rulings get politically inflated into sweeping mandates, similar to misreadings in other domains of American law and culture.