Get Ready for Anti-Gun Hysteria

I can't predict the future, but this is a no brainer. In case you haven't heard, the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear the D.C. gun ban case. (D.C. had a law on the books outlawing private ownership of handguns -- thereby ensuring that only criminals had guns. The law was finally challenged and the law struck down.)

This is the first time since the 1930s that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a gun rights case. Liberals have tried over the years to concoct the theory that the 2nd Amendment only guarantees a "collective" right to keep and bear arms. Unfortunately for libs, honest recent scholarship has begun to embrace the view (no surprise) that, like the other amendments, the 2nd Amendment was always intended as an individual right.

With the facts and history against them, look for desperate liberals to whip up anti-gun hysteria by playing on people's emotions. It's their standard posture and as predictable as night following day. You'll see "analysis" pieces in the media about the "legacy" of gun violence, human interest pieces on lives destroyed by some shooting; and, heaven forbid there's an incident along the lines of Columbine or Virginia Tech, but liberals won't even wait for the smoke to clear before they're in front of the microphones exploiting the tragedy.

I'm cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court will uphold the Constitution and affirm the Court of Appeals in the D.C. case, but, no matter. If they don't may answer will be: MOLON LAVE!

Update: a quick scan of the NYTimes shows they haven't wasted any time developing the liberal talking points. Here's an excerpt for some chuckles:

November 21, 2007

Editorial

The Court and the Second Amendment

By agreeing yesterday to rule on whether provisions of the District of Columbia’s stringent gun control law violate the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the Supreme Court has inserted itself into a roiling public controversy [I wonder how much the NYTimes objected to the Supreme Court "injecting" itself into a "roiling public controversy" on abortion in 1972?] with large ramifications for public safety. The court’s move sowed hope and fear among supporters of reasonable gun control, and it ratcheted up the suspense [is this a Hollywood movie or a court case?] surrounding the court’s current term.

The hope, which we share, is that the court will rise above the hard-right ideology of some justices [unlike the reasonable and measured jurisprudence of Souter and Ginsburg] to render a decision respectful of the Constitution’s text and the violent consequences of denying government broad room to regulate guns [can you say "fear mongering?]. The fear is that it will not.

At issue is a 2-to-1 ruling last March by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that found unconstitutional a law barring handguns in homes and requiring that shotguns and rifles be stored with trigger locks or

disassembled. The ruling upheld a radical decision [ooh] by a federal trial judge, who struck down the 31-year-old gun control law on spurious grounds [ooh, ouch] that conform with the agenda of the anti-gun control lobby but cry out for rejection by the Supreme Court.

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Beyond grappling with fairly esoteric arguments about the Second Amendment, the justices need to responsibly confront modern-day reality. A decision that upends needed gun controls currently in place around the country would imperil the lives of Americans. [what about the lives of Americans imperiled because of gun control?? How many students at Virginia Tech could have been saved if they'd been allowed to have weapons for self-defense?]

I'm cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court will uphold the Constitution and affirm the Court of Appeals in the D.C. case, but, no matter. If they don't my answer to the gun grabbers will be: MOLON LAVE!