Quiet Declarations

The Court has released the opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290), on whether the District’s firearms regulations – which bar the possession of handguns and require shotguns and rifles to be kept disassembled or under trigger lock – violate the Second Amendment. The ruling below, which struck down the provisions in question, is affirmed.

Justice Scalia wrote the opinion. Justice Breyer dissented, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg.  I’m going to quote at length from the majority opinion, just so there is no confusion:

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
No. 07–290. Argued March 18, 2008—Decided June 26, 2008

District of Columbia law bans handgun possession by making it a crime to carry an unregistered firearm and prohibiting the registration of handguns; provides separately that no person may carry an unlicensed handgun, but authorizes the police chief to issue 1-year licenses; and requires residents to keep lawfully owned firearms unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device. Respondent Heller, a D. C. special policeman, applied to register a handgun he wished to keep at home, but the District refused. He filed this suit seeking, on Second Amendment grounds, to enjoin the city from enforcing the bar on handgun registration, the licensing requirement insofar as it prohibits carrying an unlicensed firearm in the home, and the trigger-lock requirement insofar as it prohibits the use of functional firearms in the home. The District Court dismissed the suit, but the D. C. Circuit reversed, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms and that the city’s total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when necessary for
self-defense, violated that right.

Held:
1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53.
(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.
(b) The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved. Pp. 22–28.
(c) The Court’s interpretation is confirmed by analogous armsbearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed the Second Amendment. Pp. 28–30.
(d) The Second Amendment’s drafting history, while of dubious interpretive worth, reveals three state Second Amendment proposals that unequivocally referred to an individual right to bear arms. Pp. 30–32.
(e) Interpretation of the Second Amendment by scholars, courts and legislators, from immediately after its ratification through the late 19th century also supports the Court’s conclusion. Pp. 32–47.
(f) None of the Court’s precedents forecloses the Court’s interpretation. Neither United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553, nor Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 264–265, refutes the individual rights interpretation. United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes, but rather limits the type of weapon to which the right applies to those used by the militia, i.e., those in common use for lawful purposes. Pp. 47–54.

2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 54–56.

3. The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute—would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional. Because Heller conceded at oral argument that the D. C. licensing law is permissible if it is not enforced arbitrarily and capriciously, the Court assumes that a license will satisfy his prayer for relief and does not address the licensing requirement. Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising Second Amendment rights, the District must permit Heller to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home. Pp. 56–64.

478 F. 3d 370, affirmed.

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and KENNEDY, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SOUTER, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ., joined. BREYER, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which STEVENS, SOUTER, and GINSBURG, JJ., joined.

It’s been exciting to know people who have argued before the Supreme Court; it’s even more exciting to know people who have won.  There’s still plenty of room for DC to gut the ruling and further screw up their laws, of course.  But after more than 200 years, we finally have a precedent on the books affirming the reality of what the Framers intended, rather than a “living constitution” interpretation of wishful thinking.

Megan McArdle and Pete Boettke got all worldviewy on Friday.

Today Barack Obama opted out of public financing for the general election, forgoeing $84.1 million in public funds but allowing him to accept unlimited private contributions.  I don’t have any problem with this whatsoever, but it’s worth making the point that I don’t believe any presidential candidate does, or ever will, act on principle with respect to accepting public funds.

Candidates accept public financing when they do not think they can raise that amount in private funds, and they reject public financing when they think they can exceed that amoung in private funds.  Obama’s statement that he fully believes in the system but has to opt out ”we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system” is a bunch of rhetorical crap, and if McCain opts out, it will be equally hypocritical.

Remember this important axiom: the election process is intentionally designed such that only the type of person who is willing to do almost anything to be president will actually succeed at it.

Megan links to economist jokes!  I’ve actually seen this site before, but had forgotten about it.  Most of these are really freaking bad, but here’s a decent one:

A mathematician, an accountant and an economist apply for the same job.

The interviewer calls in the mathematician and asks “What do two plus two equal?” The mathematician replies “Four.” The interviewer asks “Four, exactly?” The mathematician looks at the interviewer incredulously and says “Yes, four, exactly.”

Then the interviewer calls in the accountant and asks the same question “What do two plus two equal?” The accountant says “On average, four - give or take ten percent, but on average, four.”

Then the interviewer calls in the economist and poses the same question “What do two plus two equal?” The economist gets up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer and says, “What do you want it to equal”?

Ouch.

As we consider all sorts of policy ideas related to gas prices, or the probable causes thereof, Andrew Sullivan links to five reasons to love $4 gas that are probably worth consideration.  Prices do change behavior.

Good list.  The sports, western, and epic lists are respectable.  The mystery list is Hitchcock-heavy, probably rightly so.  The sci-fi and fantasy lists, and especially the romantic comedy list, however, are retarded products of collaboration by old people.

From the Post story, here’s a quote by the AFI president about including City Lights at the top of the romantic comedy list:

This is why these shows are so important. They keep these films in the cultural conversation,” said Bob Gazzale, AFI president. “When `City Lights’ is honored as the No. 1 romantic comedy, millions of people will go back and watch it again.

These actually are pretty cool.

The Dallas Observer is all about the sugary goodness of Dublin Dr Pepper in a lengthy piece last week, presumably timed to coincide with Dr Pepper week in Dublin!  This is awesome:

The Dr Pepper plant is so revered in Dublin that on Monday, June 9, in an annual rite of summer, a crew of workers will drive around the city limits taking down the signs that read “Dublin” and replacing them with signs that read “Dr Pepper, Texas.”

This act of civic devotion marks the beginning of the weeklong celebration of the plant’s anniversary—it turns 117 this year. The party peaks on Saturday, June 14, with live music and carnival booths. (See dublindrpepper.com for details.) That’s also when the judges will select the local girl who will serve as this year’s “Pretty Peggy Pepper.”

Pretty Peggy Pepper contestants are high school seniors who compete in sportswear and evening gowns as well as in onstage interviews. The judges consider each contestant’s grades in school as well as her charm and appearance. The winner gets to wear the Pretty Peggy Pepper outfit, which looks like a majorette’s uniform, while representing Dublin Dr Pepper at fairs, parades and the 10-2-4 Dr Pepper Collector’s Club Convention.

Though because I am a Dr Pepper geek, I actually knew that already.  This, however, I did not know:

According to books on the Beatles, Paul McCartney originally named the Beatles’ song and groundbreaking concept album Dr. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The name was changed when McCartney was informed that Dr Pepper was the name of an American soft drink.

(Thanks to Court for the tip!)

I’ll again refer to Matt, who discusses the Bush legacy vs. the Truman legacy:

Harry Truman was hugely unpopular when he left office, but people love him now. This seems to give a lot of comfort to George W. Bush and other members of his administration, but Spencer Ackerman makes the excellent point that Truman still isn’t admired for his handling of the Korean War. It’s that, in retrospect, other things Truman did came to look really smart and far-sighted.

I think this is a very good observation.  The question that immediately comes to mind is: what things, if any, do people currently agree that Bush has done well, as opposed to things people will eventually remember that he did well?  Or, to frame it more closely to Matt’s point, will Bush be remembered for anything but Iraq?

Bush has been sub-40% in the polls for so long that people forget just how much of his agenda was successfully passed prior to 2005, not to mention getting re-elected, so he probably won’t be remembered as ineffective.  Despite the efforts of some factions that have tried (since 1999) to simultaneously paint him as an evil mastermind and bumblingly incompetent, Bush probably won’t be remembered as more than one of those.

I have a hard time believing that Bush will be remembered for steel tariffs, withdrawing from the ABM treaty, or refusing to sign Kyoto.  I think Medicare Part D is a tossup, leaning toward no if his successor passes universal healthcare.  Same story for the environment: at the end of the day people are only going to be talking about the last president to take (or fail to take) action.  Economists and political scientists will remember that he cut taxes a bunch of times, appointed Bernake to the Fed, signed Sarbanes-Oxley, etc., but none of that stuff is going to end up in the high school history textbooks.

Perhaps more controversially, I don’t even think Bush will be remembered for No Child Left Behind or Hurricane Katrina.  The former will be substantially reconstituted at some point, and the latter will certainly be remembered but I believe the blame will ultimately fall on the response more generally and probably not on Bush himself.  So if I don’t believe Bush will be remembered for any of those things, what’s left?

The obvious answer is Iraq, but I’m going to make a riskier expansion and argue that Bush will instead be remembered for a “9/11 narrative.”  One version of this story paints Bush as a controversial new president with an unclear mandate who seized the reins after 9/11, giving the country a new imperative via a Global War on Terror.  A few of the less hostile historians might even praise him for his strength and ability to unify the nation.

I believe this narrative will include Afghanistan and the hunt for Bin Laden, and then turn a sharply critical eye to Iraq and the restrictions of civil liberties more broadly.  Whether this narrative includes Libya, Abu Ghraib, or North Korea will probably depend on how much space the textbooks devote to his presidency.  It will also be interesting to see how history records nuances of the narrative such as the “international coalition” and Bush’s less-than-cordial relationship with the United Nations.

I think it’s unlikely Bush will end up with a Trumanesque legacy, but I do think the comparison with Truman is more legitimate than Matt contends.  In addition to (and including) Korea, Truman is remembered for a set of actions that all fall under the legacy of successfully navigating post-WWII international relations.  I think Bush wants to be remembered for a set of actions that, to him, all fall under a post-9/11 legacy of keeping the country safe, and viewed in that context Iraq is merely one part.  This is not to say Bush will succeed at achieving such a legacy; it is merely to argue that the comparison isn’t as farfetched as it seems.

One major wrench in Bush’s expectations is that many of his policies have turned out objectively poor.  Even worse news for Bush: his legacy will be written by history professors, who are a decidedly non-objective demographic group — over 70% vote consistently Democratic.  You might remember the much-publicized informal History News Network survey, in which 81% of history professors who responded judged the Bush presidency a failure in 2004.  (In its more recent follow-up, 98% of respondents judged it a failure.)  I think it’s fair to point out the qualitative responses are loaded with criticisms that only someone with a left-wing lens would make — here’s one example:

I think the presidency of George W. Bush has been generally a failure and I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Ronald Reagan–because of the unconscionable military aggression and spending (especially the Iraq War), the damage done to the welfare of the poor while the corporate rich get richer, and the backwards religious fundamentalism permeating this administration.

This is not to say that conservatives, centrists, and libertarians won’t ultimately judge the Bush presidency a failure as well, but I would expect them to be far more likely to withhold final judgment for a longer period.  It takes at least 20 years to begin to get a sense of how history will remember a president, and I’m willing to bet that the people who are truly comfortable throwing around statements like “Bush will certainly go down as the worst president in history” probably had a pretty strong opinion of him before he ever took office.

All right, enough of this for the time being.  By the way, America’s Future Foundation is hosting a roundtable on Bush’s legacy on Wednesday, June 18 (that I unfortunately won’t be able to attend), if you’re in DC and interested in discussing further.  Not to mention the comments section below.

Via Matt, James Joyner offers a good summary of the evolution of the political blogosphere from 2003 to present.

I started blogging in July 2004, when there were thousands of blogs but an intelligent, diligent blogger could still break into the traffic stratosphere (albeit I most certainly did not).  As with all new products, I suspect that blogs will follow the S-Curve of Innovation, and that the “profit” (i.e. traffic, prestige, power) opportunity at this point lies in specializing and then promoting oneself aggressively to the early addopters.

1) At an intersection containing a yield sign and a stop sign, the yield does not trump the stop.  Instead, the yield becomes equivalent to the stop sign whenever a car is approaching the stop sign.

2) In at least some (hopefully most) states, it is explicitly illegal to use the center turn lane as a merge lane when turning onto a major road.  The fact that some people aren’t capable of turning left without pulling into the turn lane and coming to a near-full stop is why the turn lane is sometimes affectionately known as the “suicide lane.”

Check out this great piece on the evolution of William Shatner’s public persona.

I often like to point out that Shatner is one of the few actors from Star Trek (or Star Wars, for that matter) who managed to escape the curse of being forever recognized for a single role.  Even better, he can laugh at himself and is appreciated for it!

Must-see Shatner (excluding Star Trek): The Twilight Zone: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Free Enterprise, Boston Legal (season 1 in particular), and the “Get a Life” sketch from the 12/28/86 episode of Saturday Night Live.

How about $45 trillion of them?  This seems ambitious:

The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.

It gets better:

Gielen said most of the $45 trillion forecast investment — about $27 trillion — would be borne by developing countries, which will be responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Good luck with that.  Are we sure adaptation shouldn’t be an option?

Must-see video: George Will vs. Stephen Colbert

“Let’s just create a ‘freedom terrarium’ where we just put a dome over this free area, keep outside influences from coming in, and then you put like a turtle and a fiddler crab in there, and then like a fern to create some oxygen, you know, maybe a cricket or something like that, and then these things all just feed each other, and then it’s okay if the turtle eats the fiddler crab.”

Also, Colbert vs. Bob Barr

“I, myself, am a libertarian.  I don’t want big government to infringe on my right to tell other people how to live.”

Everyone under the sun is writing about this, so I won’t, except to say that I thought Bob Novak’s column today in the Post is a pretty good summary of what’s probably happening behind the scenes over the next couple of days.