Op-Ed: Justice for gun owners

By Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman
Special to the Fort Worth (TX) Star-Telegram

Martin Luther King Jr. put it best: "A right delayed is a right denied."

The lesson appears to have been lost on the Department of Justice and Solicitor General Paul D. Clement in the amicus curiae brief submitted recently for the government in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, which challenges the city's 31-year-old handgun ban, a horrible gun law that has had its day in court and lost.

In a transparent exercise of political pandering, Clement and his colleagues named on the brief have strenuously, and correctly, argued that the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right, yet they insist that every restrictive gun law currently on the books should stand.

They want this case sent back to the lower courts for further consideration. Translation: Legal sleight of hand is being used to make the Second Amendment a right "in name only." And Clement appears to suggest that the longer the Supreme Court can put off deciding whether a restrictive gun law violates that important civil right, the better.

It is gratifying that the government properly holds the Second Amendment to be protective of an individual right, but that gratification is greatly diminished by the argument that this case requires further review. That would be a great injustice, and as King once noted, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

The good residents of Washington, D.C., have waited long enough for this Draconian law to be challenged, and to further delay a ruling is to spit in the faces of all of those people who have waited for years to simply exercise their right of self-defense. The ban has been an utter failure, with violent crime actually rising after its inception.

Click here for the entire op-ed from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.