Gun control did not happen overnight. It started with small, seemingly minor measures that slowly crept into an entire Leviathan that seeks to manipulate the law into a boot upon the throat of man by taking away our right to keep and bear arms, turning it into a privilege instead. If that.
But we, as gun rights advocates, often trip over ourselves while trying to move the needle back toward liberty.
Now, let's understand that the people who do so are often well-meaning, and perhaps more troubling, often correct on the surface about what they're saying. They're just failing to acknowledge anything less than perfection, as they see it.
Yes, there was a history of rivalry between Bearing Arms and The Truth About Guns. When I started here, though, no one briefed me on it, no one else was here, so as far as I'm concerned, it's dead. What I'm about to say isn't an attempt to revive it, because I like the people over there. I agree with them 99 percent of the time,
But I'm going to pick on Darwin Nercesian a bit over there, because he's just kind of the one doing it today, versus any animosity toward him.
Yesterday, he had a piece published titled, "One Law at a Time: How Congress Dismantled the Second Amendment Over 90 Years." It's really good and really correct about almost everything.
And then we get to his discussion of Heller, brief as it is.
Heller, the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
The Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller confirmed what the plain text already said — that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms, but it also left open a list of regulations described as “presumptively lawful,” giving lower courts decades of license to uphold and create new infringements that could survive no legitimate Constitutional test. Heller was a Trojan horse disguised as a victory, and it did nothing to restore what the NFA, GCA, or the Hughes Amendment stole from Americans.
I'm sorry, but I think calling Heller a "Trojan horse" is a little unfair.
He's not wrong about what Heller failed to address, but we also have to remember what Heller actually did.
For the first time, a Supreme Court decision made it explicitly clear that we had a right to keep and bear arms, that it was an individual right rather than some ridiculous collective right, and that governments could not dictate gun control that would leave us defenseless. That was a massive leap forward for gun rights, and while it wasn't what I'd have preferred, it still beat what we had.
Supreme Court rulings are often limited in scope. This might be because the Court legitimately feels that it shouldn't step too hard on the legislative branch, or it might be lingering fear of court packing from the FDR era, a fear revived by the left every time the Court hands down a decision they dislike.
Still, Heller wasn't perfect, but it set the stage for what was to come.
Bruen wasn't perfect, either, but it ended "may issue" permitting and set a test for the constitutionality of gun control laws that ridiculously few can meet, particularly if they're forced to exclude using Black Codes, as we saw explicitly laid down in Wolford last week.
Blasting Heller as a "wolf in sheep's clothing" isn't remotely what it is, at least as I see it. What it was, though, was a somewhat flawed decision that still affirmed the right to keep and bear arms, even if only to a modest degree. Without it, I'm not sure we'd see the victories we have, and for that alone, I think it deserves better than Nercesian gave it.
I was with him completely until that point, but here I think we see how we in the gun rights community often let the perfect be the enemy of the "better than we had."
