{"id":20014,"date":"2018-04-13T14:44:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T18:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=20014"},"modified":"2018-04-16T15:22:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T19:22:03","slug":"gun-control-advocates-are-finally-admitting-what-they-really-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2018\/04\/13\/gun-control-advocates-are-finally-admitting-what-they-really-want\/","title":{"rendered":"Gun Control Advocates Are Finally Admitting What They Really Want"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I don\u2019t own an AR-15. I\u2019m not a \u201cgun person,\u201d whatever that means. I hardly ever shoot. And I never hunt.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m nonetheless a big supporter of private gun ownership. In part, this is because I have a\u00a0libertarian belief<\/a>\u00a0in civil liberties. In other words, my default assumption is that people should\u00a0have freedom<\/a>\u00a0(the notion of \u201cnegative liberty<\/a>\u201c), whereas many folks on the left have a default assumption that the state should determine what\u2019s allowed.<\/p>\n

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I also support private gun ownership because I\u00a0want a safer society<\/a>. Criminals and other bad people are\u00a0less likely to engage in mayhem<\/a>\u00a0if they know\u00a0potential victims can defend themselves<\/a>. And I also think that there\u2019s a greater-than-zero chance that bad government policy eventually will lead to periodic breakdowns of civil society, in which case gun owners will be the\u00a0last line of defense for law and order<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sometimes asked, though, whether supporters of the 2nd Amendment are too rigid. Shouldn\u2019t the NRA and other groups support proposals for \u201ccommon-sense gun safety\u201d?<\/p>\n

Some of these gun-control ideas may even sound reasonable, but they all suffer from a common flaw. None of them would disarm criminals or reduce gun crime. And I\u2019ve detected a very troubling pattern, namely that when you explain\u00a0why these schemes won\u2019t work<\/a>, the knee-jerk response from the anti-gun crowd is that we then need greater levels of control. Indeed, if you press them on the issue, they\u2019ll often admit that their real goal is gun confiscation.<\/p>\n

Though most folks in leadership positions on the left are crafty enough that they try to hide this extreme view.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s why\u2014in a perverse way\u2014I want to applaud John Paul Stevens, the former Supreme Court Justice, for his column in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0that\u00a0openly and explicitly argues<\/a>\u00a0for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment.<\/p>\n

\u2026demonstrators should\u2026demand a repeal of the Second Amendment. \u2026that amendment\u2026is a relic of the 18th century. \u2026to get rid of the Second Amendment\u00a0would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.\u2019s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option. \u2026That simple but dramatic action would\u2026eliminate the only legal rule that protects sellers of firearms in the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The reason I\u2019m semi-applauding Stevens is that he\u2019s an honest leftist. He\u2019s bluntly urging that we jettison part of the Bill of Rights.<\/p>\n

Many\u2014if not most\u2014people on the left want that outcome. And a growing number of them are coming out of the pro-confiscation closet. In\u00a0an article<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0Commentary<\/em>, Noah Rothman links to several articles urging repeal of the 2nd Amendment.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re talking about repealing the Second Amendment. It started with former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley.\u00a0\u2026Turley and Stevens were joined this week by op-ed writers in the pages of\u00a0Esquire<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0Seattle Times<\/em>. Democratic candidates for federal office have even enlisted in the ranks of those calling for an amendment to curtail the freedoms in the Bill of Rights. \u2026anti-Second Amendment themes\u2026have been expressed unashamedly for years, from liberal activists like Michael Moore to conservative opinion writers at the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>. Those calling for the repeal of the right to bear arms today are only echoing similar calls made years ago in venues ranging from\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em>, MSNBC, and\u00a0Vanity Fair\u00a0<\/em>to the Jesuit publication\u00a0America Magazine<\/em>.<\/blockquote>\n

But others on the left prefer to hide their views on the issue.<\/p>\n

Indeed, they even want to hide the views of their fellow travelers. Chris Cuomo, who has a show on\u00a0MSNBC<\/em>, preposterously asserted<\/a> that nobody supports repeal of the 2nd Amendment.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s also worth noting that Justice Stevens\u00a0got scolded<\/a>\u00a0by a gun-control advocate at the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest threats to the recovery of the Democratic Party these days is overreach. \u2026But rarely do we see such an unhelpful, untimely and fanciful idea as the one put forward by\u00a0retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens.\u00a0\u2026Stevens\u00a0calls for a repeal of the Second Amendment. The move might as well be considered an in-kind contribution to the National Rifle Association, to Republicans\u2019 efforts to keep the House and Senate in 2018, and to President Trump\u2019s 2020 reelection bid. In one fell swoop, Stevens has\u00a0lent credence to the\u00a0talking point that the left really just wants to get rid of gun ownership. \u2026This is exactly the kind of thing\u00a0that motivates the right\u00a0and signals to working-class swing voters that perhaps the Democratic Party and the political left doesn\u2019t really\u00a0get<\/em>\u00a0them.<\/blockquote>\n

The bottom line is that the left\u2019s ultimate goal is gutting the 2nd Amendment. Not much doubt of that, even if some leftists are politically savvy enough to understand that their extremist policy is politically suicidal.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s set aside the politics and look at the legal issues. There\u2019s another reason why I\u2019m perversely happy about the Stevens op-ed. Even though he was on the wrong side of the case, he effectively admits that the\u00a02008 Heller<\/em> decision<\/a>\u00a0enshrined and upheld the individual right to own firearms.<\/p>\n

And the five Justices who out-voted Stevens made the right decision. I\u2019m not a legal expert, so I\u2019ll simply cite some people who are very competent to discuss the issue. Starting with what Damon Root\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0Reason<\/em>.<\/p>\n

One problem with Stevens\u2019 position is that he is dead wrong about the legal history. \u2026For example, consider how the Second Amendment was treated in St. George Tucker\u2019s 1803\u00a0View of the Constitution of the United States<\/em>,\u00a0which was the first extended analysis and commentary published about the Constitution. For generations of law students, lawyers, and judges, Tucker\u2019s\u00a0View<\/em>\u00a0served as a go-to con-law textbook. \u2026He observed the debates over the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as they happened. And he had no doubt that the Second Amendment secured an individual right of the \u201cnonmilitary\u201d type. \u201cThis may be considered as the true palladium of liberty,\u201d Tucker wrote of the Second Amendment. \u201cThe right of self-defense is the first law of nature.\u201d In other words, the\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0majority\u2019s view of the Second Amendment is as old and venerable as the amendment itself.<\/blockquote>\n

Well stated.<\/p>\n

Though the real hero of this story is probably Joyce Lee Malcolm, the scholar whose work was instrumental in producing the Heller<\/em> decision. John Miller\u00a0explains<\/a>\u00a0for National Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Malcolm looks nothing like a hardened veteran of the gun-control wars. Small, slender, and bookish, she\u2019s a wisp of a woman who enjoys plunging into archives and sitting through panel discussions at academic conferences.\u00a0Her favorite topic is 17th- and 18th-century Anglo-American history\u2026 She doesn\u2019t belong to the National Rifle Association, nor does she hunt. \u2026She is also the lady who saved the Second Amendment\u2014a scholar whose work helped make possible the Supreme Court\u2019s landmark\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0decision, which in 2008 recognized an individual right to possess a firearm.<\/blockquote>\n

Ms. Malcolm started as a traditional academic.<\/p>\n

For her dissertation, she moved to Oxford and Cambridge, with children in tow. \u2026Malcolm\u2019s doctoral dissertation focused on King Charles I and the problem of loyalty in the 1640s\u2026 The Royal Historical Society published her first book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But her subsequent research uncovered some fascinating insights about the right to keep and bear arms.<\/p>\n

At a time when armies were marching around England, ordinary people became anxious about surrendering guns. Then, in 1689, the English Bill of Rights responded by granting Protestants the right to \u201chave Arms for their Defence.\u201d Malcolm wasn\u2019t the first person to notice this, of course, but as an American who had studied political loyalty in England, she approached the topic from a fresh angle. \u201cThe English felt a need to put this in writing because the king had been disarming his political opponents,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is the origin of our Second Amendment. It\u2019s an individual right.\u201d \u2026Fellowships allowed her to pursue her interest in how the right to bear arms migrated across the ocean and took root in colonial America. \u201cThe subject hadn\u2019t been done from the English side because it\u2019s an American question, and American constitutional scholars didn\u2019t know the English material very well,\u201d she says. \u2026The Second Amendment, she insisted, recognizes an individual right to gun ownership as an essential feature of limited government. In her book\u2019s preface, she called this the \u201cleast understood of those liberties secured by Englishmen and bequeathed to their American colonists.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And it turns out that careful scholarship can produce profound results.<\/p>\n

\u2026in 2008, came\u00a0Heller<\/em>, arguably the most important gun-rights case in U.S. history. A 5\u20134 decision written by Scalia and citing Malcolm three times, it swept away the claims of gun-control theorists and declared that Americans enjoy an individual right to gun ownership. \u201c\u2026it gave us this substantial right.\u201d She remembers a thought from the day the Court ruled: \u201cIf I have done nothing else my whole life, I have accomplished something important.\u201d \u2026the right to bear arms will not be infringed\u2014thanks in part to the pioneering scholarship of Joyce Lee Malcolm.<\/blockquote>\n

Let\u2019s close with a video from Prager University, narrated by Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA. He explains the legal and historical meaning of the 2nd Amendment.<\/p>\n