Op-Ed: Bush Administration Wrong on Guns

The fallout continues over the Bush administration's Russian roulette-style legal maneuvering on the D.C. gun ban case.

Following are excerpts and links to two excellent op-eds examining the potential motives, and the obvious mistakes, being made by the Bush Justice Department.

Bush Administration Wrong on Guns
HumanEvents.com

Although there are several important cases this term, none will have the effect on the public’s mind that the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller will have. In that case, the Supreme Court will finally take up one of the great, undecided matters of constitutional law: Whether the Second Amendment guarantees a personal right to bear arms. Whatever the Court decides, it will have implications on electoral politics for the next generation. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has ignored an opportunity to push the Court toward the right on the issue, and transform the politics of the 2008 elections in the process.

...Which raises the question: What the heck was the Bush Administration thinking? For decades, a critical component of the Republican coalition has been working class gun owners who are bothered by the Democrats’ embrace of gun control. Republicans actually seem to have won that battle, with Democrats backing off of gun control legislation in the recent Congress. Why after enduring so much hostile press would the Bush Administration sell out the NRA at this critical juncture? And why make the reversal in a difficult election year, when the support of gun control opponents will be so critical to Republican fortunes?

...The Administration seems to be playing a game of high stakes poker with an incendiary issue in an election year. One can only hope it does not get us all burned.

Click here to read the entire op-ed at HumanEvents.com.

Misfire at Justice
Wall Street Journal

The Second Amendment's right to bear arms has rarely been considered by the Supreme Court, but this year the Court is hearing a case that could become a Constitutional landmark. So it is nothing short of astonishing, and dispiriting, that the Bush Justice Department has now weighed in with an amicus brief that is far too clever by half.

...This is precisely the kind of activist judicial nightmare that President Bush himself claims to oppose.

So why would his own Solicitor General do this? The speculation in legal circles is that Mr. Clement is trying to offer an argument that might attract the support of Anthony Kennedy, the protean Justice who is often the Court's swing vote. But this is what we mean by "too clever by half." Justice Kennedy would be hard-pressed to deny that the Second Amendment is an individual right, given his support in so many other cases for the right to privacy and other rights that aren't even expressly mentioned in the Constitution. No less a left-wing scholar than Laurence Tribe has come around to the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right for this very reason. Mr. Clement is offering a needless fudge.

...The SG's blundering brief only increases the odds of another inscrutable High Court split decision, with Justice Kennedy standing alone in the middle with his balancing scales, and the lower courts left free to disregard or reinterpret what could have been a landmark case. Is anybody still awake at the White House?

Click here to read the entire Wall Street Journal editorial.

The Supreme Court has set a date for hearing arguments in the D.C. gun ban case. Oral arguments will take place March 18 at 10 a.m.