BREAKING NEWS! GREAT SCOTUS POLICY CHANGE ANNOUNCEMENT FOR 2A

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Major breaking news as Justice Samo and Justice Clarence Thomas have just announced that the Supreme Court needs to do more perurium decisions in favor of law-abiding Americans, which yes, would include Second Amendment supporters and people whose Second Amendment rights have been violated.

[00:00:17]This is a huge deal, folks. A signal of things to come because when Justice Thomas indicates what should occur at the Supreme Court, usually it occurs, including in the context of the Second Amendment. Let's break it down when we come right back. Big news out of Scotas just now.

[00:00:35]Hey folks, I'm Mark Smith, host of the Forbox and Diner, proud American gun owner, constitutional attorney, member of the United States Supreme Court Barn, and I'm proud to say the top voice of the Second Amendment in America. Thank you. 2025 and 2026 Gun Newsies Awards.

[00:00:46]All right, this is huge news, folks. Out of the US Supreme Court. Again, what makes this huge news? You may not understand why it's huge news, but I'm going to explain to you to make you the smartest person in the room. That's why you tune in to the four box of diner channel so you hear something beyond shall not be infringed when it comes to the real world of second amendment fights and the fight for America and our freedom and our constitution. That is a decision today in the case of Gary Witten versus the state of Florida which actually is a criminal conviction given rise to the death penalty. And you may say why is this connected up to the second amendment? Well, we're gonna get to that in one second but I just want to give you the background of this case and what happened. Then we're going to give you the good news. The bottom line in this case of Witten, which you may read about, is Mr. Whitten was convicted of murdering his buddy in a hotel room and he was convicted of stabbing his buddy to death and stealing his money and then was sentenced to not just prison, he was sentenced to death. Well, he went and fought his conviction in the Florida state court system. Then after losing there over and over and over again, he then argued that his conviction was wrong in various ways in the federal system using what's known as the federal habius corpus, which is a second way that a criminal defendant can argue he was wrongfully convicted in a state case. And this was a Florida state case where he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Now what just occurred and listen carefully was the Supreme Court in what's known as a perurium decision as no specific judge or justice wrote the opinion. It was kind of the court in total basically said that the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which is the federal appeals court that oversees various states, including Florida, that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals had made a technical error, a technical mistake in assessing whether or not Gary Whitten's habius corpus petition was right or wrong, correct, or not. And what the US Supreme Court just did in a per curium decision says look the we're not saying whether or not Mr. Whitten is guilty or not or innocent or not or should win or not. What we're saying is that the methodology of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in overseeing this particular habius corpus request to let me out of prison and get me off death row. We're saying that technically speaking the 11 circuit court of appeals did not assess the case right. And one of the problems they flagged was that in considering this havius corpus petition as to whether or not Mr. Whitten uh should have his conviction overturned, they said that the uh 11th Circuit, for example, considered DNA evidence showing that the victim's blood was on Mr. Wittton's boots at the time of the murder and thereafter. And they pointed out that that the 11th Circuit wrongfully considered that the DNA evidence that was uncovered or tested for like 15 years after the trial that the 11th Circuit should not have considered that type of evidence that was done years after the trial. They should only have looked at what happened at the trial.

[00:03:54]And the big issue at the time of the trial was testimony by the prison inmate of this guy who testified under oath at the trial that uh Mr. Witten had admitted to killing his buddy with a knife. And there's questions about that testimony which I won't belabor the point here. But here is what's so significant about the Second Amendment.

[00:04:14]That is the context in which I'm about to describe the good news for the Second Amendment. So that is the basic case.

[00:04:20]And what the court did, the Supreme Court did is they said, "Look, 11th Circuit, we're not saying you did it right or wrong or anything like that.

[00:04:26]What we're saying is the process that you just went through to decide this case and rule that the death penalty and Mr. Wittton's conviction should be upheld and there's no habius corpus challenge appropriate here. You didn't really do it right. The process you followed was wrong. The procedure was wrong. The standards you applied was wrong. we want you to reassess this in light of the guidance we're now giving you in the Supreme Court per curium opinion. So they're sending it back to the 11th Circuit for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider uh the habius corpus petition of Mr. Whitten.

[00:04:59]They didn't say what's going to happen.

[00:05:00]They just says please do it and do it the right way. Now the reason why this is significant for the second amendment is because of a disscent that was written by Justice Clarence Thomas and signed on to by Sam Alto. Now, as you know, big picture-wise, I've been saying for quite some time that it is absurd that we keep having second amendment cases. We keep having these fights over our rights where we have these terrible facts involving criminal cases like Zachi Raheem who took his wife's took his girlfriend's head and beat it against the dashboard and then he shot at witnesses. Then we have Mr. Ammani who has ties allegedly to terrorist groups in Iran and of course was an essentially an admitted drug dealer and drug user and we know that the court doesn't like criminals as a general matter and these are the cases that we're going to use to vindicate our second amendment rights and you know I think that's a terrible strategy although I don't control it that is something we've talked about on this channel before. So with that said what did Justice Thomas just do which I consider to be very very good news for the Second Amendment and that is he flagged the point of as false. He said, "Look, if this Supreme Court is going to start fixing lower court errors, lower court e fups, if you will, moving forward in criminal cases, which we have been doing recently, including this case of Witten, we the Supreme Court need to start doing the same error correction when the lower courts, including the courts of appeals, screw up the way they apply, for example, oh, I don't know, the first amendment, the second amendment, and these other cases involving being law-abiding ordinary Americans because law-abiding ordinary Americans have the same rights as do these criminal thugs. And that's essentially what Justice Thomas and Justice Alo were saying. If we're going to bend over backwards and effectually make sure that these tickytack mistakes by the lower courts are fixed via these percarium decisions, these sort of short summary opinions that we're going to say go back and redo it the right way. that we need to start saying go back and do it the right way with cases involving law-abiding noncriminal cases involving law-abiding noncriminal American citizens which obviously would include second amendment rights claimants saying that a particular gun control law violates the law. So with that said here is what Justice Thomas and Justice Alto had to say and remember the history of Justice Thomas is he repeatedly flags issues of the direction the court should go and it almost always proves true. For example, before I get to what he said in this case to give me the good news is I want to prove my track record and that is this. In 1997 in the US Supreme Court decision of Prince versus United States, guess what Justice Thomas said, you know, in a foot, he said this in a footnote, you know, um, I'm going to rule against the United States because this federal gun control law violates the commerce clause and violates the 10th amendment. It violates certain things involving, you know, the structural constitution. But the reality is this case also might present a question of violations of the second amendment right to keep and bear which I think is probably an individual right.

[00:08:01]Here's some citations to prove it. And that was in 1997. Justice Thomas is flagging the fact that the second amendment protects an individual right that was 11 years before the Heler decision in 2008. Again, Justice Thomas as he said and for example Casey, you know, I think this abortion thing looks a little bit made up to me. This right to an abortion. This probably needs to be fixed. And of course we have DOS in 2022 that took away and knockout Ro vie Wade. He also said that if you want to get rid of race discrimination and Justice Roberts agrees if you want to get rid of race discrimination in America the way to do it is to stop discriminating against race. Stop discriminating on the basis of race. And of course that is a point he made many years ago in various cases. And of course thanks to those cases involving Harvard and UNC we now have race discrimination as a general matter in colleges are verbotton. And he also raised issues with the voting rights act which as you know has been severely cut back preventing race from being considered in the context of drawing democratic controlled blue dots in these red states that was just knocked out in Louisiana versus Kelly. So the point is when Justice Thomas says you know we the Supreme Court need to move in a particular direction historically his predictions and his guidance has proven correct it's proven uh Nostradamus like and that's where they go. So when Justice Thomas says we need to start error fixing lower court mistakes when it comes to the rights of law-abiding Americans, guess what? That's extremely good news for the Second Amendment. So with that said, here's what Justice Thomas has to say about why he desents in this case involving a death penalty criminal convicted guy and a murderer.

[00:09:34]And then he starts to compare and contrast to why don't we do precurring decisions to summary decisions in favor of the law-abiding Americans? Why are we only doing it with criminals? Here's what Justice Thomas and Justice Alo had to say in this descent in Witten just now. The Supreme Court has increasingly granted summary relief in certain cases based on lower court errors. Errors that seemingly had no effect on the outcome of the case. Signed to a case called Pitts which granted summary vocator for a man who sexually abused his daughter after likely harmless trial error.

[00:10:03]Signed to a case called D. um per curium decision as well granting summary vocatory which means to vacate or get rid of after likely harmless error in a state intermediate appeal court error right the same thing then he goes on to say justice Thomas writes it would be one thing listen carefully this is extremely important folks listen carefully to this write this down it would be one thing if this practice reflected the court's consistent commitment to correcting legal errors in all cases but in reality this Supreme Court routinely declines to provide relief to all abiding Americans when it would actually matter. Even after lower courts conspicuously flout this court's precedence in ruling against them. It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court here chose to intervene at the request of a convicted murderer to correct the 11th Circuit's inconsequential footfall. What makes it even worse is that the Supreme Court does so even while it refuses to correct far more consequential errors for law-abiding citizens such as those uh such as the discriminated against families in Boston and the students seeking to challenge university censorship. I therefore respectfully descent exactly right. But this is great because he said Justice Thomas and Justice Alto are sending a message to their fellow justices that this we can start correcting things. Now, you know, in the Second Amendment context, there's two obvious errors that the lower courts keep making. One is that AR-15s and semi-automatic rifles are not arms at the plain text level of the Second Amendment. So too are magazines not arms at the plain text level, even though they are instruments that facilitate armed self-defense, which is the standard articulated expressly so by the US Supreme Court in the Brewan case.

[00:11:45]Likewise, these lower courts keep saying that because a particular area is congested with people that is a basis for banning guns there and making them sensitive places or gun-free zones, governmentmandated gunfree zones. Even though the US Supreme Court in Bruin literally said that you cannot make the island of Manhattan in New York City a sensitive place or governmentmandated gun-free zone simply on the grounds that it is congested and there's generally speaking the NYPD patrolling. So those are easy to fix mistakes by the lower courts that keep getting made and the US Supreme Court in a summary per curum decision like here in uh Whitman like also or I should say like here in Whitten and like they did in Katano 2016 they can send a back and say redo it under the right standard that would be very easy to do and that is essentially what Clarence Thomas is saying here in this descent and I want to give you the two examples that Justice Thomas mentions and what's quite interesting is he doesn't mention any second amendment cases which would be an obvious which tells me maybe they're thinking about doing it with the second amendment uh cases with some summary procurium opinions. Again, it's going to be quite interesting. I could see that happening.

[00:12:50]I think this is a message. But let's see what Justice Thomas has to say about the examples he gives to show where law-abiding Americans are getting thrown under the bus by unconstitutional regimes and the Supreme Court is letting it go. Let's see what he has to say.

[00:13:02]Check it out. Consider Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence versus the School Committee. In that case, the Boston School Committee implemented an admissions policy to reduce the number of white and Asian students at their elite exam schools. The committee made its racist intent clear. One member said that she was sick of whites, while another mocked the names of Asian students after forgetting to mute himself on a Zoom hearing. Despite this clearly unconstitutional race discrimination, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit out of Boston ruled against parents who had challenged the affirmative action policy. And in a near identical case, the Fourth Circuit out of Virginia, another terrible court, did the same. Justice Thomas goes on to write, "Yet even when presented with multiple opportunities to vindicate the rights of families to pursue education for their children on colorblind terms, this Supreme Court has refused to correct a glaring constitutional error."

[00:13:53]Exactly right. Again, Justice Thomas is saying that there's clear erroneous mistakes being made by the lower courts.

[00:13:59]He gave an example of race discrimination which violates among other things the equal protection clause in the 14th amendment a violation of the constitution. States and government agencies are not allowed to do that and yet they were doing it there in Boston and the Supreme Court let it stand and Supreme and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is saying we cannot be doing this anymore because yeah it's not a criminal case but it's super duper important to those children and to the parents. And then he goes on and gives another example of why it's absurd that the Supreme Court does not engage in this perurum summary decision-making where they write short opinions saying go back and redo it in the same way they just did in this witten case to say to the sir go back and redo this death penalty habius petition. Why aren't they doing it with cases involving law-abiding Americans? Why are they focusing on helping criminals who deserve their rights? Of course, but why are they not doing the same? You can't do it for criminals and thugs and and and and people that misbehave, but you're not doing the same summary dispositions and precurring opinions in favor of ordinary law-abiding Americans, which is what should be happening.

[00:14:56]Here's the other example that Justice Thomas gives. Check it out. Or consider Speech First, Inc. versus Witten. In that case, the Supreme Court declined to hear a student association's challenge to Indiana University's bias response team, which fields anonymous complaints about student speech and considers whether to refer the accused to comp campus offices or even to the police.

[00:15:15]Under these university policies, an untold number of American students with unpopular views had to self censor the discussion of these views out of fear that others will likely report them to the bias response team. Lower courts had held that these students did not even have standing to bring a lawsuit in federal court in plain tension with this court's precedents. Yet the Supreme Court refused to hear these students cases. Again, you see the point that Justice Thomas is driving home here. And remember when Justice Thomas flags something on day one. On day 10, you often see the Supreme Court in Toto change directions. He did it with the second amendment in the Prince case identifying in 20ou in 1997 that we need to look at the second amendment as protecting individual right. that then occurred. Same with affirmative action.

[00:15:58]He said this is not allowed. Ultimately, his views were vindicated. Same with Roie Way needs to go away in Casey.

[00:16:04]Guess what? In dos that went away. That precedent went away. So again, when Justice Thomas flags an issue, watch very carefully the direction of the court in total because he and Justice Alo have a lot of respect uh are given a lot of respect and a lot of people respect him greatly on the court. So again, if Justice Thomas is saying we need to do more perurium summary decisions in favor of law- abiding citizens, I can think of no better example of a subject matter that is ripe for the kind of picking uh involving this kind of summary disposition in favor of rights claimants than second amendment cases. So I think we should watch this very carefully. I got my fingers crossed and my candles lit that we may see some kind of vindication of the summary disposition in the case of Duncan versus California, Duncan versus Bont involving the magazine ban in California andor the case of Gator Custom Guns involving the Washington State ban on magazines brought to you by among others uh my former law school classmate Governor Bob Ferguson. You know, it's crazy, but that's a whole topic of a different day. All right, folks. There you have it. I think overall this is good news. But again, the battle is every day. We fight for freedom every day and we hope to win the war. I expect we will, but it's a fight every day and we're fighting every day here at the four boxes diner. So with that said, thanks for tuning in. Make sure you follow me over there on X4boxes Diner. Don't forget to subscribe both YouTube and the Remo. I'll talk to all again real soon here at the Four Boxes Diner.

[00:17:22]>> Orders up. Table 2 A.