Conservative Donnybrook

Beautiful. Just plain worth a few moments to read.

Apparently, so according to this story. He will saying Mass at Yankees Stadium during his April visit to New York City. He also plans to visit Ground Zero. I sincerely hope this doesn’t make it a sin to be a Cubs fan – I don’t need that weighing on my soul as well.

I have a friend. Let us call him Nick. (Since it is unlikely that he will ever read this blog -  unless we first convert it to a video blog and then air it on the USA Network between Mannix and The Rockford Files – I feel confident I can use his real name.) Nick is the sort of person who becomes quite alarmed at the slightest hint of government interference in his personal life, but inconsistently so. For instance, he steadfastly refuses to own a vehicle that contains the OnStar system because he’s pretty sure the government uses it to track the whereabouts of citizens and, in particular, him. Yet, he carries a cell phone everywhere he goes.

I met Nick in 1990 at the “Smoker’s Corner” outside the engineering building at Purdue’s Indianapolis campus. There were quite a few of us who would huddle outside the door and smoke cigarettes. Nick was the guy that every single one of us would have sworn would be the last guy on earth to quit smoking. In fact, we used to joke that someone needed to be with him at all times so that when he died, we could pry the smoldering cigarette out of his fingers, lest he burn the house down around his corpse. He always said he would quit smoking when the government had taxed them to the point where they cost $2 per pack (they were just over a dollar then).  “Yeah, yeah, Nick,” we would say not believing a word of it. Cigarettes hit $2, Nick is now a non-smoker. We were all stunned.

When the government passed the seatbelt laws but exempted trucks, Nick traded in his Cougar for an Explorer. When cigarettes hit $3 a pack, Nick warned me that they would be going after alcohol next. <Shudder>. Apparently, he had judged that argument as being the most likely thing to scare the bejeezus out of me and maybe cause me to start taking this whole threat seriously.

I tell this shaggy dog story for the sole purpose of introducing this excellent piece in Reason Magazine.

I would just like to publicly acknowledge that Nick was right and I was wrong. The government does want to ride around in my back pocket, keeping me safe from myself. And I don’t like it!

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Mark Tuesday on the calendar. That is the day the Supreme Court will announce whether it will take up a challenge to the District of Columbia’s ban on private ownership of handguns in the district. At issue will be whether the Second Amendment’s terse sentence securing the right to bear arms applies to individuals or only to militiamen. Surprisingly, the Supreme Court has never taken up this argument and Second Amendment jurisprudence is exceedingly sparse.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of individual ownership, throwing out the D.C. ban.

”The right to keep and bear arms was not created by the government, but rather preserved by it,” Judge Laurence Silberman wrote for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “The amendment does not protect the right of militiamen to keep and bear arms, but rather the right of the people.”

If the Court decides to hear the case, and all it will take is four Justices to vote in favor of granting certiorari, it will be risky to advocates on both sides as the outcome is questionable. I had to go to the Dead or Alive website to check Charleton Heston’s status, who once said that they will have to pry his gun from “his cold, dead hands.” Turns out the government may have a bit more of a fight than that. Heston is still kicking and presumably clutching tightly his Brooks flintlock rifle.

If the Court takes up the argument, you can be sure that the Donnybrook will be watching this case closely.