The heart of the problem

There's a medium-length article on the Heller case in a Kansas newspaper. Unfortunately I let this post sit in the queue long enough that the article itself appears to have expired. However, before it disappeared, I did snag one memorable quote from the Brady Bunch:

"Jails and courtrooms are filled with people prosecuted and convicted for violating gun laws," said Jonathan Lowy, senior attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "If I'm a defense attorney trying to think of how to get a gun criminal off the hook, one argument is he was executing his constitutional right to keep and bear arms."

The bold type is mine. In the minds of the gun bigots, there are gun criminals, people who should be locked up merely for having or wanting to have a gun. The assumption is that anyone who has a gun is a criminal -- otherwise innocent men and women turned into criminals not for any malicious act, but for merely the morally-neutral act of possession.

Because, of course, the 2nd Amendment does not protect violent crimes like murder, rape, or battery. It protects the peaceful ownership and use of arms. Anyone who is in jail, or on trial, merely because they had a gun is not a criminal. They are a victim of deprivation of civil rights under color of law.

If they used that gun to commit some other crime of violence, or even credible intimidation (where intimidation does NOT mean accidentally letting someone see a gun), throw the book at them. But just possession, keeping or bearing, for a non-felon? That's not a crime, that's a right.

Posted on 2008-04-07 15:13:50.0 by matthew@triggerfinger.org

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