The Second Amendment shouldn't be a partisan issue. It's a constitutionally protected right, like the right to be free of illegal search and seizure, or the right to speak freely.
It's not, though. It's very partisan, at least as practiced, which makes this very interesting.
See, while Washington state has gone deep down the anti-gun rabbit hole, and they recently ruled that magazines weren't "arms" under the Second Amendment in the state supreme court, the dissent was interesting, and not so much because of what it said but who said it.
But, in an event comparable to the parting of the Red Sea, there was a dissent, written by a liberal-leaning Democrat, stating such bans were unconstitutional.
In her dissent, which begins on page 20 of the ruling, Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud trashed the arguments used by the court. Not only did she dismiss the arguments accepted by the majority, she called out the state’s motivation:
“Finally, the State argues that we should view our nation’s early limits on the right to keep and bear arms at an extremely high level of generality—so high that we characterize those old laws as barring weapons once society weighs their utility against their danger and decides that they are too dangerous. But that is precisely the sort of policy-laden interest-balancing that the United States Supreme Court dissenting) has explicitly barred under the Second Amendment. And it is the sort of interest-balancing that repressive governments have historically used to suppress opposition.”
The arguments supporting magazine bans are dubious at best. It’s not a stretch to call them lies. And it’s a breath of fresh air to see a high-ranking state judge do exactly that.
That quoted paragraph should be put up in the Louvre.
McCloud is a liberal judge, but it sounds like she fully understands what Bruen said, whereas most of her colleagues on the state bench don't seem to grok it in the least.
But let's note that last sentence for a bit. "And it is the sort of interest-balancing that repressive governments have historically used to suppress opposition," she wrote. That's not something she attributes to the Supreme Court. It's something she says to assault this idea of interest balancing that seems to come from within her.
She happens to be right, by the way. If the government's interests supersede those of the people, then the government can quash any right simply by arguing that it's in its interests to do so.
The Second Amendment got that treatment all the time. Intermediate scrutiny was common, and it meant a lot of gun control laws were upheld because the government can always make the case that their interests in stopping people from having guns is more important than our right to do so.
McCloud called her colleagues out on that, and did so quite accurately here.
I'm not going to lie, it's gorgeous to see. It's beautiful beyond words.
This is how it's supposed to be. Politics should fall by the wayside when we're talking about our civil rights. That's for any of our civil rights. Unfortunately, many on the left side with anti-gun forces and seek to actively suppress our right to keep and bear arms because of the fairy tale that it will make us safer.
Yet in the above-quoted piece, there are some fascinating statistics about Washington state and how their so-called gun crime has performed since they started embracing gun control. Spoiler: It ain't working.
Not only is this a work of art, but it's a refreshing one, too.
On gun rights, I will stand with anyone who will support our right to keep and bear arms. I respect members of the Liberal Gun Club, for example, because they stand with us on gun rights. I won't talk general politics with them because, in many ways, that's where we depart, but here? Here is where we should all be standing shoulder to shoulder.
It's just that there aren't enough liberal judges like McCloud running around. We should change that.
