SCOTUS & Navarette v. California: Applications to Gun control?

On January 21st, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Navarette v. California, a Fourth Amendment case on whether an officer who receives an anonymous tip regarding drunk driving must corroborate the dangerous driving before stopping the car.

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The California brief takes a different approach. Instead of just asking when “reasonable suspicion” exists, California asks the Court engage in interest balancing on a case-by-case basis. In California’s view, the reasonableness of a stop isn’t based on whether Terry‘s reasonable suspicion standard has been satisfied in the abstract. Instead, California sees Terry as merely one application of reasonableness balancing, and it asks the Court to engage in interest balancing afresh by considering the nature of the crime to be investigated when assessing whether the stop was reasonable. The basic idea is that drunk driving is so serious a problem that stopping a car for suspected drunk driving requires less cause than would a stop for a less serious offense. The more serious the crime, the less suspicion is needed.

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Repeater said:

<snip> It would be very easy for gun-hating courts and states to assert 'gun violence' is so serious that less suspicion is needed. That mentality would threaten all who carry. Anonymous tipsters often lie, or are simply wrong. MWAG tips, without clear Fourth Amendment protections, could be quite dangerous.

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