Predictable Post-McDonald Media Hysterics

The oral arguments for McDonald v Chicago, challenging Chicago's ban on handguns, took place earlier this week. The official ruling will not be handed down until sometime in June, but the transcripts of the arguments and firsthand accounts by those who attended have all indicated that the Court is likely to incorporate the 2nd Amendment against the states. Having seen this coming since Heller was decided almost 2 years ago, the usual anti-gun media outlets have littered their opinion sections with biased, outcome-oriented diatribes against the forthcoming ruling.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is a particularly egregious offender. His gun metaphors are everywhere including the article's title: "Justices arm themselves with activism in Chicago gun ban case". His opening sentence is so absurd that it should give you pause and consider whether further reading is even necessary:

It's about to get easier to shoot people in Chicago. Actually, it's about to get easier to shoot -- and be shot by -- people in the rest of the country, too.

Forget the fact that Chicago is one of the most dangerous cities in America despite its handgun ban. Forget the fact that states that allow handgun ownership and carry have no measurable increase in crime because of it (often there is a decrease in crime). Forget the fact that criminals have no regard for the ban, and only honest citizens are effected by it. Forget the fact that Chicago is one of the few places in the US where handguns are banned outright, making it an absurd notion that allowing them in this one small prohibited area will somehow make it "easier" to shoot people in the rest of the country. Milbank goes on to call Scalia an 'activist' for appearing to support the incorporation of gun rights against the states. What he fails to mention is that simply overturning an existing law does not an activist make, especially in the framework of the Constitution. The activism that Scalia has spoken out against in the past is one that creates rights that have no contextual basis in the words of the Constitution. I believe the Heller decision does an exemplary job of explaining the textual, historical, and cultural meaning of the 2nd Amendment.

But Milbank is not alone. The Philadelphia Inquirer, known to blame the city's rampant crime problem on the gun laws of greater Pennsylvania, also warns of dangerous times ahead. The unsigned article also opens with dire (and fraudulent) warnings:

A gun-rights decision by the Supreme Court two years ago threatened to make it more dangerous to walk the streets of Washington...(the Court) seems intent upon expanding the risk to other U.S. cities by dismantling strong gun-violence safeguards.

I'm sorry - MORE dangerous to walk the streets of Washington? DC has been one of the most violent cities in America for decades. Somehow allowing citizens who submit to various tests, fees, and fingerprints to own a gun strictly in the confines of their home will make the streets more dangerous? Again, this is based upon no factual information whatsoever.

There are two themes that can be found in both articles which I find more frightening than any of the baseless warnings they spout. The first is their advocacy of outcome-driven Supreme Court decisions.

(the Court) will be embarking on a social and legal experiment that's likely to play out across the chalk outlines on many cities' mean streets. Given the national plague of gun violence, that's simply the wrong course for the court.

These articles barely even reference a militia clause or a collective rights theory. They simple state that the 2nd Amendment should not be extended to the states because they have a belief (with inconclusive evidence) that it will save lives. Making decision on the Supreme Court level based purely on the desired outcome is dangerous to all of our rights and essentially makes the Constitution a dead letter.

The second scary theme the authors' put forth is a belief that that an absolute ban on the most popular class of firearms (handguns) somehow is a 'reasonable regulation' that passes the strict scrutiny given to a fundamental enumerated right.

The question now is how far the high court will let the NRA go in undoing the sensible gun-safety rules with which many communities have long been comfortable...As Bryan Miller, head of the New Jersey anti-gun-violence group Ceasefire NJ, noted: "Chicago's handgun ban has been in effect for 28 years. Yet suddenly the gun lobby has manufactured a court case with the intention of totally dismantling our nation's gun laws so gun makers can sell more guns."

The only evidence for this that they submit is simply that these prohibitions have not yet been challenged. But considering that Heller is less than 2 years old, that become an absurd statement.