Good Entropy

from Kids
Prefer Cheese: The Embarrassing 2nd Amendment.

Had a nice glass of wine last night, and re-read one of my favorite
essays, by one of my most favoritest lefties….Sandy
Levinson, of the UT-Austin Law School.

Here is the essay: The Embarrassing 2nd Amendment.

Sandy (whom I got to know down at UT-Austin when I was there) is honest.
He does not like the 2nd Amendment. But he believes in the rule of
law, and so feels obliged to point out two things.

First, the
words in the 2nd Amendment have meaning. They appear to mean that there
is an individual right to keep and bear arms. Subject to regulation,
not an absolute right, all that’s true. BUT. SOME. INDIVIDUAL. RIGHT.

Second,
we can’t pick and choose which amendments to enforce. If the Bill of
Rights is important, if the Constitution cannot be violated, then we
have to enforce all of it. If you don’t like the 2nd Amendment, then
amend the Constitution.

I enjoyed re-reading the piece, as I
said, given the events of this week. I particularly liked these
passages:

To put it mildly, the
Second Amendment is not at the forefront of constitutional discussion,
at least as registered in what the academy regards as the venues for
such discussion — law reviews, casebooks, and other scholarly legal
publications. As Professor Larue has recently written, “the second
amendment is not taken seriously by most scholars.”

…I cannot
help but suspect that the best explanation for the absence of the Second
Amendment from the legal consciousness of the elite bar, including that
component found in the legal academy, is derived from a mixture of
sheer opposition to the idea of private ownership of guns and the
perhaps subconscious fear that altogether plausible, perhaps even
“winning,” interpretations of the Second Amendment would present real
hurdles to those of us supporting prohibitory regulation. Thus the title of this essay — The
Embarrassing Second Amendment — for I want to suggest that the Amendment
may be profoundly embarrassing to many who both support such regulation
and view themselves as committed to zealous adherence to the Bill of
Rights (such as most members of the ACLU). Indeed, one sometimes
discovers members of the NRA who are equally committed members of the
ACLU, differing with the latter only on the issue of the Second
Amendment but otherwise genuinely sharing the libertarian viewpoint of
the ACLU.

Give Sandy credit: that is an honest portrayal
of the problem. He at least realized that he should be embarrassed.
And he was.

For two decades, I have been given at best a
condescending hearing when I have claimed that the 2nd Amendment clearly
confers at least a limited individual right to bear arms. And since
these same super-silly-ass folks also claim to believe the Constitution
says what the Supreme Court says it says….well, I love America.