Pride Of Ignorance On Firearms

When it comes to the Second Amendment, the Left doesn’t even understand what it’s getting wrong.

For the sneering consequentialists of the post-constitutional Left, Justice Antonin Scalia is a bogeyman among bogeymen and the Second Amendment is an exasperating relic. It should thus come as no great surprise that Scalia’s considered and thoughtful comments on the future of firearms law, offered in good faith during a speech in Montana last week, were met with brash and injudicious criticism.

As revenge for his responding to the question of whether private citizens could own rocket launchers with the modest answer that this “remains to be determined,” theDaily Kos went so far as to suggest that Scalia, whom the outlet called “Supreme Court Justice Fever Dream,” was a “crackpot” and “not right in the head.” Over at the more moderate Daily Beast, meanwhile, Adam Winkler continued to lie about the nature of the Second Amendment, contending slipperily that the “insurrectionist understanding” is false and advancing without shame the smear that “Justice Scalia, that acclaimed lover of originalism,” is “taking his cues from the Tea Party rather than from the text and history of the Constitution.”

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