| "Gun
Rights Do Not Compute," Say Media Cyborgs
By Richard Poe May 10, 2002
|
Solicitor General Theodore Olson filed two briefs with the Supreme Court Monday, which stated, among other things, that the Second Amendment guarantees to all citizens the right "to possess and bear their own firearms."
No big deal, most Americans would say. We always knew we had a right to keep and bear arms. But the gun-ban cyborgs reacted as if someone had dropped a W32.Klez virus into their brains. One can almost hear the smoke hissing from their ears, as they stammer, "This does not compute!"
CBS correspondent Jim Stewart declared that Olson’s briefs have reversed, "25 years of Justice Department policy…"
Brady Center president Michael D. Barnes said the briefs have reversed "at least four decades" of federal policy.
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert averred that federal policy has opposed individual gun rights, "for more than 60 years."
Abe Lincoln himself opposed individual gun rights, insists Paul Begala of CNN’s Crossfire. Begala says that Olson’s briefs give the Second Amendment a "new meaning that no scholar has ever found."
The cyborgs seem confused. Did the government revoke our gun rights 25, 40, 60 or 140 years ago?
John Ydstie of National Public Radio’s All Things Considered says it happened in 1939, when the Supreme Court ruled in a case called United States v. Miller.
Two bootleggers named Jack Miller and Frank Layton had been charged with transporting an unregistered short-barreled or "sawed-off" shotgun across state lines. The National Firearms Act of 1934 imposed special taxes and registration requirements on machine guns and short-barreled shotguns. It was the first federal gun-control law in America. Ostensibly passed to crack down on outlaws such as Miller and Layton, the law was controversial, since it limited gun rights for all Americans.
The charges against Miller and Layton were dismissed in district court, on the grounds that the National Firearms Act violated states’ rights and the Second Amendment. However, prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court.
That’s where the confusion begins. According to media cyborgs, the Supreme Court ruled against Miller and Layton on the grounds that they were not members of a state militia and therefore had no right to keep and bear arms.
But that is not what the court said.
In fact, the court conceded that the moonshiners were militiamen, inasmuch as the militia included "all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense." Even so, the justices were unsure whether sawed-off shotguns qualified as militia weapons.
The bootleggers might have won their case by arguing that sawed-off shotguns were used by U.S. infantrymen in World War I. However, neither Miller, Layton nor their attorney showed up in court. Only the prosecution presented its case.
Lacking sufficient evidence to rule on the case, the justices sent it back to the lower court for additional fact-finding. But the fact-finding never took place. Jack Miller was shot dead by unknown assailants. Frank Layton pleaded guilty and got four years probation.
At best, United States v. Miller ended inconclusively. Even so, liberal law professor Sanford Levinson notes that Miller can be construed to mean "that the individual citizen has a right to keep and bear bazookas, rocket launchers, and other armaments that are clearly relevant to modern warfare…" This is a far cry from the Brady Center’s interpretation.
Levinson is a rarity in the legal profession – an honest liberal. Another liberal recently stricken with honesty is Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe.
In 1999, Tribe announced that he had finally gotten around to studying the Second Amendment and, wonder of wonders, had discovered that Americans really did have a right to "possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes."
Unfortunately, Tribe’s treatise American Constitutional Law – which took a dim view of individual gun rights – had been a standard text in many U.S. law schools since 1978. Tribe revised the 1999 edition to reflect his new thinking. But he was 20 years too late.
Thanks to liberal law professors, generations of lawyers, prosecutors and judges have been indoctrinated with lies about the Second Amendment.
Just as it took generations to undermine gun rights in America, it will take generations to undue the damage. Ted Olson’s briefs are a small but important step in that direction.