{"id":68996,"date":"2021-06-15T07:23:03","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T12:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=68996"},"modified":"2021-06-15T07:23:03","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T12:23:03","slug":"68996","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=68996","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The LA Times is Still Denying the Second Amendment<\/a><\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Times editorial page is less a journalistic enterprise than it is a partisan grievance noticeboard. The editorial board\u2019s descent into trivial activist messaging was on full display in a pair of recent pieces lamenting the federal judiciary\u2019s recognition of the Second Amendment. In both, the editorial board denied the core rulings in the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s opinions in\u00a0District of Columbia v. Heller<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0McDonald v. Chicago<\/a>\u00a0that recognized the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. In neither piece did the would-be jurists at the L.A. Times offer evidence or argument as to their incorrect position or why the legal analysis of self-important regime press agents should carry any weight whatsoever.<\/p>\n

The first editorial was published on April 26 and titled, \u201cThe Supreme Court agrees to hear a case that could mean more guns in public<\/a>.\u201d The item took issue with the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s decision to grant cert to NRA-backed case\u00a0New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Corlett<\/a>. The case challenges New York\u2019s concealed carry licensing scheme and could prompt the Court to recognize that the right to keep and bear arms extends outside the home.<\/p>\n

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Lamenting the Court\u2019s cert decision, the editorial board wrote,<\/p>\n

The case the court accepted Monday (New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. Inc. vs. Corlett) follows the court<\/em>\u2019s controversial 2008 Heller decision, which for the first time enunciated a right to own a firearm in the home for self-protection, breaking with historic perceptions that the right was conferred only to members of state militias. From our perspective, it was an errant reading of the Constitution, but unfortunately the nation is stuck with it.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second editorial was published June 7 and titled, \u201cThe judge is wrong: California\u2019s assault-weapons ban must stand<\/a>.\u201d This piece complained about the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in\u00a0Miller v. Bonta<\/em>. The decision, by Judge Roger Benitez, found that California\u2019s ban on commonly-owned semiautomatic firearms violated the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n

Benitez\u2019s ruling on the California ban was the result of a faithful interpretation of the\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0McDonald<\/em>\u00a0decisions. We can be certain of this because\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0author Justice Antonin Scalia signed onto a dissent from the denial of certiorari in\u00a0Friedman v. Highland Park,<\/a>\u00a0a case concerning a local ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms, that stated as much. The dissent noted,<\/p>\n

Roughly five million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Defending California\u2019s unconstitutional ban, the L.A. Times editorial board whined,<\/p>\n

Even the Supreme Court<\/em>\u2019s controversial 2008 Heller decision, which for the first time recognized (wrongly) an individual right to keep a gun in the home for self-defense, also said that the government has an interest in regulating firearms and that\u00a0<\/em>\u201cthe right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In addition to its rejection of the\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0ruling, the editorial board did not even get the basic history correct when it contended that\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0recognized the individual right protected by the Second Amendment \u201cfor the first time.\u201d As Scalia explained in\u00a0Heller<\/em>, the Court\u2019s ruling in the 1939 case\u00a0U.S. v. Miller<\/em>\u00a0\u201cis not only consistent with but positively suggests, that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms.\u201d<\/p>\n

After their defeat in\u00a0Heller<\/em>, the more sophisticated gun control advocates abandoned their discredited collective right messaging on the Second Amendment. In fact, some gun control organizations have explicitly told activists in their\u00a0messaging guides<\/a>\u00a0not to \u201cAttack the Second Amendment or gun owners in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016, anti-gun group Americans for Responsible Solutions (now Giffords) conducted a gun control\u00a0rebranding effort<\/a>\u00a0\u201cbased on poll and focus-group data.\u201d The resulting\u00a0messaging booklet<\/a>\u00a0warned supporters not to \u201cAttack the NRA or the Second Amendment.\u201d An earlier gun control group messaging guide from 2013, titled, \u201cPreventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging<\/a>\u201d told readers to acknowledge \u201cYes, there is a right to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense.\u201d Moreover, it told gun control activists, \u201cdon\u2019t re-litigate the court\u2019s rulings.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is good reason for the anti-gun groups\u2019 advice. Aside from the fact that the outmoded collective interpretation of the Second Amendment is\u00a0indefensible<\/a>, that false reading is wildly unpopular.<\/p>\n

A February 2008 USA Today\/Gallup poll conducted prior to the\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0decision asked respondents, \u201cDo you believe the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the rights of Americans to own guns, or do you believe it only guarantees members of state militias such as National Guard units the right to own guns?\u201d The response was unambiguous; 73-percent responded that the Second Amendment guarantees the rights of Americans to own guns, while a mere 20-percent limited that right to state militia members<\/p>\n

A Quinnipiac University poll conducted shortly after the\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u00a0decision, in July 2008, mirrored these results. This poll asked respondents, \u201cWould you support or oppose amending the United States Constitution to ban individual gun ownership?\u201d 78-percent opposed such a measure, while only 17-percent were in favor.<\/p>\n

In May 2009, CNN and ORC conducted a similar poll that asked \u201cWhich of the following comes closer to your interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? In addition to addressing the need for citizen-militias, it was intended to give individual Americans the right to keep and bear arms for their own defense. It was only intended to preserve the existence of citizen-militias, and does not give individual Americans the right to keep and bear arms for their own defense.\u201d Once again, the American public made their position clear; with 77-percent choosing \u201cindividual gun ownership\u201d to 21-percent answering \u201conly citizen-militias.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With the individual right to keep and bear arms firmly established by the U.S. Supreme Court, in April 2018 Quinnipiac asked respondents \u201cWould you support or oppose repealing the Second Amendment, also known as the right to bear arms?\u201d An overwhelming 79-percent opposed repeal.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of the general public, the\u00a0federal government<\/a>, the\u00a0U.S. Supreme Court<\/a>,\u00a0both<\/a>\u00a0major political parties, and even some of the major gun control groups have all acknowledged or reluctantly acquiesced to the fact that the Second Amendment means what it says \u2013 \u201cthe right of the\u00a0people<\/em>\u00a0to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.\u201d The L.A. Times\u2019s intransigence is symbolic of an increasingly radical and detached media elite who would rather nurse their own prejudices than accept reality or provide any meaningful reporting or informed commentary.<\/p>\n

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The LA Times is Still Denying the Second Amendment The Los Angeles Times editorial page is less a journalistic enterprise than it is a partisan grievance noticeboard. The editorial board\u2019s descent into trivial activist messaging was on full display in a pair of recent pieces lamenting the federal judiciary\u2019s recognition of the Second Amendment. In … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68997,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68996\/revisions\/68997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}