Absolute Compromise

Those having read me for awhile know that I’m not a member of the NRA. I’m also not a “strict constructionist” when it comes to interpreting the Constitution.

Over the last year of this blog, I’ve done a couple of posts about gun control and the Second Amendment. You can find them by searching the blog for “Second Amendment gun” if you want to know the details of what I think.

The Supreme Court will announce soon whether it will hear the latest Second Amendment case which found the District of Columbia’s very restrictive gun law to be in violation of the Second Amendment. (Only the D.C. Circuit and the Fifth Circuit have held that people have an expansive right to own guns, the rest of the Circuits (ten) have held that restrictions on ownership, types of guns allowed and uses are constitutional.)

Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is one of the lawyers that brought the D.C. challenge. He wrote an opinion piece that has been published in a couple of papers. Here is the link to it in The Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-levy14nov14,0,2444377.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

What I found interesting is that he does not believe the Second Amendment gives “absolute” rights when it comes to guns.

“What restrictions on gun possession and use would be permissible? Almost no one argues that 2nd Amendment rights are absolute. After all, under the 1st Amendment, the right to free speech does not protect disturbing the peace; religious freedom does not shield human sacrifice…. Similarly, gun regulations can be imposed on some weapons (e.g., missiles) some people (e.g., preteens) and some uses (e.g., murder).”

Speaking of his case he said “[s]omewhere in the middle, regulations will be deemed constitutional even if the Supreme Court upholds the lower court.”

If Mr. Levy is right, and I think he is, review by the Supreme Court is much ado about nothing. What will change if he is right is that gun law will become more of a federal matter, with less discretion left to state and local government. We'll see a long series of Supreme Court cases that flesh out the ruling, the results ebbing and flowing over the decades along the lines already seen with the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and most recently, Eighth Amendments.

It's interesting to contrast this with the apparent trend in abortion cases where the Supremes are ceding more control to state and local governments. Different amendments, different treatments, with the same result.