Armed guards protect Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor although she joined a dissent in McDonald v. Chicago (2010), rejecting “a private right of armed self-defense.”
In July, one of Sotomayor’s armed guards shot a would-be carjacker outside her home.
According to the New York Post, the incident occurred shortly after 1:00 a.m. on July 5, 2024. At that time, 18-year-old Kenneth Flowers allegedly pointed a gun at a U.S. Marshal assigned to protect the justice, and the Marshal opened fire, leaving Flowers with non-life-threatening wounds.
In the five-to-four McDonald decision, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) found that Second Amendment rights are incorporated via the Fourteenth Amendment.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, and two dissents were also written. One dissent was written by Justice John Paul Stevens and the second by Justice Stephen Breyer. Importantly, Breyer was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sotomayor.
Breyer/Ginsberg/Sotomayor contended, “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.”
Later in the dissent, after criticizing a prior SCOTUS decision — District of Columbia. v. Heller (2008) — Breyer/Ginsberg/Sotomayor stressed, “Further, there is no popular consensus that the private self-defense right described in Heller is fundamental.”
In the early portion of the dissent’s conclusion, Breyer/Ginsberg/Sotomayor claimed, “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.’”
Sotomayor enjoys armed protection while rejecting claims that the Second Amendment is in place to shelter the People’s “private right to self-defense.”
RELATED — AWR Hawkins: “The Central Component” of the Second Amendment Is “Self-Defense”
ahawkinsAWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
