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Statistics
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Dick Morris, “Heller” and “schizophrenic” attitude about guns (Part 1)
July 10, 2008 | Tagged Dick Morris, Heller, Second Amendment, Supreme Court |
On 07-01-08, Dick Morris, former Clinton advisor turned Fox News Analyst, wrote for jewishworldreview.com that the Supreme Court of the U.S. chose “…the wrong time…to make a sea change…admitting the Second Amendment to our pantheon of civil liberties…by demonstrating how willing they are to toss aside decades of jurisprudence in pursuit of a conservative agenda…” Mr. Morris voiced concern that American women will now fear the demise of Roe v. Wade and vote Democrat to uphold the right of every woman to abort her unborn child. That eventuality would indeed be an unfortunate outcome of the Heller decision that affirmed the individual right of American citizens to self-defense.
Mr. Morris also described himself as “…a bit schizophrenic…” about gun control, admitting that the Second Amendment does recognize an individual right. He also states that “…it is equally apparent that strict gun controls do a great deal to save lives and have played no small part in the major reduction in homicides in the past decade and a half.”
Before addressing what I believe to be Mr. Morris’s misapprehensions and concerns, I want to say that I hold Mr. Morris, himself, to be a literal national treasure for his insight into the Liberal mind and the workings of the Clinton Political Machine. Mr. Morris is one of the very few people alive today who has an intimate knowledge of the Clintons and the courage to share that information with the American Public. I believe we owe Mr. Morris a deep debt of gratitude.
Mr. Morris is a brave and gracious individual. I would like to help clarify what I believe to be his confusion and “schizophrenia’ regarding the history of the Second Amendment and the “benefits” of gun control.
First, I believe Mr. Morris has been misinformed about the history of the Second Amendment. As David Kopel points out in the book, Supreme Court Gun Cases, in thirty-four of thirty-five cases where the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) mentioned the Second Amendment in conjunction with other issues, (in dicta) the justices treated the Second Amendment as an individual right, along with the right to free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, etc. (Kopel, Halbrook, Korwin, Supreme Court Gun Cases, Bloomfield Press, Scottsdale, AZ, 2003.)
Two cases, in which the individual right to arms is mentioned, refer to persons to whom the right is denied. In Scott v. Sanford, better known as the Dred Scott case, the issue was raised as to whether or not a slave became free, if he were taken into a state that did not allow slavery. The court stated that if Dred Scott were “…entitled to the rights of a citizen…” he and other Blacks could “…hold public meetings upon political affairs, and keep and carry arms wherever they went.” This case was decided in 1857.
No mention is made in Scott v. Sanford of membership in a militia. The right to arms is clearly defined as the right of a citizen. Whatever we may now think of the antebellum morality of the Scott decision with regard to slavery, it is abundantly clear that the SCOTUS in the 1850’s was not ambivalent on the meaning of the Second Amendment.
Fast forward to 1950. A second case that illuminates this question is that of Eisentrager . (Page 784) This case concerned the rights of enemy combatants who continued to resist after the surrender of the German Armed Forces in the Second World War. (Eisentrager was subsequently overturned on other grounds, but like Scott, it clearly demonstrates the position of the SCOTUS with regard to the Second Amendment.)
Eisentrager claimed that the rights enumerated in the Second Amendment were “universal,” and applied to all persons, not only to American Citizens. This case clearly lists the Second Amendment right to arms as one of the fundamental rights of citizens, but not a right of “irreconcilable enemy elements, guerrilla fighters, or “werewolves.” (As the hard core German resisters were called.) The Second Amendment right is grouped with the First, the Fourth, the Fifth, and the Sixth Amendments. No mention is made of states’ rights or the militia. (How absurd would it be to try to insert a community rights interpretation into this case? Would a state somehow have the right to recruit and arm a foreign combatant?)
Thus, in just our brief review, from the 1850’s to 1950, we see a consistency in thought on the SCOTUS regarding the individual nature of the right to arms. In 97% of the historical cases where the Second Amendment has been mentioned in dicta, the right clearly rests with the people and not the states.
Other Supreme Court cases deal more directly with our issue. Cruikshank, in 1876, described the individual right to self-defense as predating and not dependent upon the Second Amendment for protection from Congressional infringement.
In Verdugo-Urquidez, in 1990, in dicta, the court described “the people” as “a term of art” referring to ”…a class of persons who are part of a national community…” and to whom the First, Second, Forth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments apply. When did the militia ever have the exclusive right to assembly or to protection from unreasonable search and seizure?
Mr. Morris is correct in saying that SCOTUS tossed aside “…decades of” (lower court) “jurisprudence…” It did so in favor of centuries of rulings that supported the original intent of the founders not to grant a right, but to recognize a natural right to self-defense from crime and yes, tyranny.
It is beyond the scope of this post to discuss the reasons why a complacent, partisan, or revisionist Liberal judicary faction in academia and the courts chose to denigrate the Second Amendment, or why a complacent, partisan, or complicit mainstream media failed and fails to publish the whole story. These issues will hopefully be the subjects of future discussions.
I do not believe Heller was a “sea change” as much as it was the cleansing of an often misunderstood backwater of civil rights jurisprudence. Part 2 will briefly discuss the scientific evidence in the debate about the highly questionable “benefits” of gun control. (See my post, “Gun suicide article typical ‘advocacy journalism,’ (07-06-08) on this site under the Category: Benefits of guns.)
Def Mech
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