Liberal legal scholars and Gun rights - NY Times

Glenn E. Meyer

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FYI - if you aren't out watching for zombies :D

May 6, 2007 NY Times

A Liberal Case for Gun Rights Helps Sway Judiciary
By ADAM LIPTAK

In March, for the first time in the nation’s history, a federal appeals court struck down a gun control law on Second Amendment grounds. Only a few decades ago, the decision would have been unimaginable.

There used to be an almost complete scholarly and judicial consensus that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias. That consensus no longer exists — thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading liberal law professors, who have come to embrace the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns.

In those two decades, breakneck speed by the standards of constitutional law, they have helped to reshape the debate over gun rights in the United States. Their work culminated in the March decision, Parker v. District of Columbia, and it will doubtless play a major role should the case reach the United States Supreme Court.

Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said he had come to believe that the Second Amendment protected an individual right.

“My conclusion came as something of a surprise to me, and an unwelcome surprise,” Professor Tribe said. “I have always supported as a matter of policy very comprehensive gun control.”

The first two editions of Professor Tribe’s influential treatise on constitutional law, in 1978 and 1988, endorsed the collective rights view. The latest, published in 2000, sets out his current interpretation.

Several other leading liberal constitutional scholars, notably Akhil Reed Amar at Yale and Sanford Levinson at the University of Texas, are in broad agreement favoring an individual rights interpretation. Their work has in a remarkably short time upended the conventional understanding of the Second Amendment, and it set the stage for the Parker decision.

The earlier consensus, the law professors said in interviews, reflected received wisdom and political preferences rather than a serious consideration of the amendment’s text, history and place in the structure of the Constitution. “The standard liberal position,” Professor Levinson said, “is that the Second Amendment is basically just read out of the Constitution.”

The Second Amendment says, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” (Some transcriptions of the amendment omit the last comma.)

If only as a matter of consistency, Professor Levinson continued, liberals who favor expansive interpretations of other amendments in the Bill of Rights, like those protecting free speech and the rights of criminal defendants, should also embrace a broad reading of the Second Amendment. And just as the First Amendment’s protection of the right to free speech is not absolute, the professors say, the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms may be limited by the government, though only for good reason.

The individual rights view is far from universally accepted. “The overwhelming weight of scholarly opinion supports the near-unanimous view of the federal courts that the constitutional right to be armed is linked to an organized militia,” said Dennis A. Henigan, director of the legal action project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “The exceptions attract attention precisely because they are so rare and unexpected.”

Scholars who agree with gun opponents and support the collective rights view say the professors on the other side may have been motivated more by a desire to be provocative than by simple intellectual honesty.

“Contrarian positions get play,” Carl T. Bogus, a law professor at Roger Williams University, wrote in a 2000 study of Second Amendment scholarship. “Liberal professors supporting gun control draw yawns.”

If the full United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit does not step in and reverse the 2-to-1 panel decision striking down a law that forbids residents to keep handguns in their homes, the question of the meaning of the Second Amendment is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court. The answer there is far from certain.

That too is a change. In 1992, Warren E. Burger, a former chief justice of the United States appointed by President Richard M. Nixon, expressed the prevailing view.

“The Second Amendment doesn’t guarantee the right to have firearms at all,” Mr. Burger said in a speech. In a 1991 interview, Mr. Burger called the individual rights view “one of the greatest pieces of fraud — I repeat the word ‘fraud’ — on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Even as he spoke, though, the ground was shifting underneath him. In 1989, in what most authorities say was the beginning of the modern era of mainstream Second Amendment scholarship, Professor Levinson published an article in The Yale Law Journal called “The Embarrassing Second Amendment.”

“The Levinson piece was very much a turning point,” said Mr. Henigan of the Brady Center. “He was a well-respected scholar, and he was associated with a liberal point of view politically.”

In an interview, Professor Levinson described himself as “an A.C.L.U.-type who has not ever even thought of owning a gun.”

Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian group that supports gun rights, and a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the Parker case, said four factors accounted for the success of the suit. The first, Mr. Levy said, was “the shift in scholarship toward an individual rights view, particularly from liberals.”

He also cited empirical research questioning whether gun control laws cut down on crime; a 2001 decision from the federal appeals court in New Orleans that embraced the individual rights view even as it allowed a gun prosecution to go forward; and the Bush administration’s reversal of a longstanding Justice Department position under administrations of both political parties favoring the collective rights view.

Filing suit in the District of Columbia was a conscious decision, too, Mr. Levy said. The gun law there is one of the most restrictive in the nation, and questions about the applicability of the Second Amendment to state laws were avoided because the district is governed by federal law.

“We wanted to proceed very much like the N.A.A.C.P.,” Mr. Levy said, referring to that group’s methodical litigation strategy intended to do away with segregated schools.

Professor Bogus, a supporter of the collective rights view, said the Parker decision represented a milestone in that strategy. “This is the story of an enormously successful and dogged campaign to change the conventional view of the right to bear arms,” he said.

The text of the amendment is not a model of clarity, and arguments over its meaning tend to be concerned with whether the first part of the sentence limits the second. The history of its drafting and contemporary meaning provide support for both sides as well.

The Supreme Court has not decided a Second Amendment case since 1939. That ruling was, as Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a liberal judge on the federal appeals court in San Francisco acknowledged in 2002, “somewhat cryptic,” again allowing both sides to argue that Supreme Court precedent aided their interpretation of the amendment.

Still, nine federal appeals courts around the nation have adopted the collective rights view, opposing the notion that the amendment protects individual gun rights. The only exceptions are the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, and the District of Columbia Circuit. The Second Circuit, in New York, has not addressed the question.

Linda Singer, the District of Columbia’s attorney general, said the debate over the meaning of the amendment was not only an academic one.

“It’s truly a life-or-death question for us,” she said. “It’s not theoretical. We all remember very well when D.C. had the highest murder rate in the country, and we won’t go back there.”

The decision in Parker has been stayed while the full appeals court decides whether to rehear the case.

Should the case reach the Supreme Court, Professor Tribe said, “there’s a really quite decent chance that it will be affirmed.”
 
Interesting article.

What baffles me is, where did the "collective" right(as if there could be such a thing) come from? Some single misapplication of the term "militia" that grew legs and hung on as pleasing to the Elites?

The people have always viewed the 2A as a personal, individual Right. The courts seem to have been not only at odds with that but, until the 60's, powerless in that opposition. Them for a short time(relatively speaking) we get federal and state anti-gun laws, then people raise hell and voila, the "scholarly opinion" changes... :rolleyes:
 
The founding fathers were no doubt wise, but they could have made things alot easier by simply saying "the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed." and left out the part about free states and militas.
 
A liberal friend of mine made this "collective" argument one day and so I asked him who the "militia" was at the time the Constitution was written. He of course had no idea. When I told him it was all able bodied free males over the age of fifteen, he started to stutter and said "Well, times change." I then asked him if he was willing to give up freedom of the press, speech, or religion and of course he said no. I then told him I wasn't giving up my right to bear arms either.
 
Dr Meyer, how dare you suggest that any stinkin liberal could ever be pro-gun? :D Don'cha know that's simply not possible in this universe?

I wish I could take one of your classes.
 
Most liberals also gloss over the fact that there were TWO "militias" in force during the days in which the Constitution was written. The standard militia was, as defined in USC, all males above an age. Then, there was a Special Militia that we would consider the National Guard today. This was not the militia discussed in USC or the Constitution, as it was chosen from the standard militia, and better equipped and trained. They refer to the Special Militia, ignoring it's origins.

I'm curious how a liberal can understand extending First Amendment Rights to radio, Internet, and television, none of which existed in the 1700s, yet will question how the Founders could have imagined automatic weapons would be protected today.

You cannot pick and choose how you enforce the structure of the Constitution. If it's legal to publish lists of our foreign assets and operatives, leading to their incarceration or death, why isn't it just as legal to possess firearms which might injure or kill? Both lead to the same end.
 
Thanks, Redworm. I think one my effective traits in promoting the RKBA is that I'm not a dinosaur era conservative with all the unpleasantness that goes with. Many in the education business are intelligent and rational. They reject the irrational and hateful nature of a subset of social conservatives. Thus, if that subset is progun - it is an easy jump to think that position is worthwhile.

I point out the need for self-defense and that the RKBA protects us from extremes of the social conservative fringe that would establish state religions, still have problems with race, control the rights of free speech, infringe on women, want to control the sexual behavior of consenting adults, have an insane war on drugs, etc. The same case was made in a recent article about Progressives for the 2nd Amend.

We see that from our favorite internet commandos on this site. While I don't buy automatically everything from the Democrats - I fear that Republicans who feel openly that they can state they don't believe in evolution are a tip of an American Taliban. It is unfortunate the the Dems moved away from supporting the RKBA. We can find statements for it by liberal thinkers like Hubert Humphrey.

I was once interviewed by Larry Pratt, he suggest that I might be more liberatarian - perhaps - but I'm certainly not one of the social authoriartians that wish to police your crotch and choose your god for you. They are happy with that as long as they can play with their guns. They have no sense of civil liberties. They trumpet the rights of the government to violate the Constitution to get to the Islamic enemy but forget that if the government ever wanted to get the guns :eek: - ever method that civil libertarians protest now would be used against them.

Don't they think that after another Oklahoma city - the let's fight crowd - would end up in an American Gualog or Guantanamo?

Rant off. Guns with out other liberties - so what.
 
There used to be an almost complete scholarly and judicial consensus that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias.

Horse crap. The "consensus" was shared by certain academics who weren't constitutional historians and judges with agendas. For decades, the weight of the arguments have been stronly in favor of the individual rights interpretation, including some dicta from the Supremes. The only law review articles that supported the collective rights farce had been written by employees of members of anti-gun groups, and weren't considered of much worth.
 
Below is from Don Kates - noted legal scholar on the gun rights issue. BTW - he describes himself as a liberal for those of you who just spout the usual rants on the issue. Know him quite well.

-------

Yesterday I circulated to you a NY TIMES article on the 2d Am which, though surprisingly accurate in what it overtly said was nevertheless highly misleading it what it implied and failed to disclose. A number of you wrote urging that I turn it into a letter to the editor. I have done so as you can see below.

You may ask why I run it by you again as you saw essentially the same thing yesterday. My reasons are: to show that I have heeded your suggestion; and because you are a hell of a lot more likely to see it here than in the TIMES.

-Don Kates


*********************

Re: "A Liberal Case for Gun Rights Helps Sway Judiciary"
By ADAM LIPTAK
New York Times
May 6, 2007
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/06firearms.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin>



To the Editor

The pervasive inaccuracy of the N.Y. TIMES on gun issues is epitomized by the fact that "A Liberal Case for Gun Rights" is the most accurate treatment the Times has ever given the Second Amendment – and yet is still highly misleading.

From the article the ordinary reader would come away with the following
misimpressions: 1) from its enactment in 1791 to roughly 1980 everyone viewed the 2nd Am. as a states right or a meaningless "collective right"; 2) since 1980 a few ivory tower intellectuals have theorized that the Second Amendment might be a right of individual gun owners; 3) nonetheless the great majority of authorities say that is wrong.

The truth is almost diametrically opposite. Specifically:

1) From its enactment till the 20th Century gun control movement the Second Amendment was universally understood as protecting an individual right to possess arms. Not one court or commentator asserted otherwise; 18th and 19th Century judges and commentators routinely described the Amendment as a right of individual gun owners and expressly analogized it to the rights of freedom of speech, religion, jury trial etc., etc. [See David B. Kopel "The Second Amendment in the Nineteenth Century," 1998 BRIG. YOUNG L. REV. 1359.]

2) The states’ right and collective rights theories are previously unknown artifacts of the 20th Century gun control movement having no constitutional provenance whatever. William Van Alstyne, a paramount figure in 20th-21st Century constitutional law, summarized the matter
thus: "In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the 'collective right' of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of 'the people' to keep and bear arms. If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis." William Van Alstyne, "The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Arms", 43 DUKE L. J. 1236, 1243, n. 19 (1994)

3) Far from the Second Amendment creating a states’ militia right, nearly 200 years of Supreme Court cases on the militia hold that the federal government has plenary power over the militia with state authority being limited to issues on which Congress has not spoken.
[Houston v. Moore, 18 U.S. 1, 24 (1820) (federal authority over the militia is paramount -- federal militia legislation preempts state), Martin v. Mott, 25 U.S. 19 (1827) (federal authority over the militia is paramount -- president's power to call militia from state control into federal service), Selective Draft Law Cases, 245 U.S. 366, 383 (1918) (federal authority over the militia is paramount -- Congress has power to abolish state militias by bodily incorporating them into federal army), Perpich v. Department of Defense, 496 U.S. 334 (1990) (federal authority over the militia is paramount -- state militias may be called into federal service over state objection).]
4) Over 120 law review articles have addressed the Second Amendment since 1980. The overwhelming majority affirm that it guarantees a right of individual gun owners. That is why the individual right view is called the "standard model" view of the 2d Am by supporters and opponents alike. [The phrase "standard model" originated in a review of the scholarly literature by an individual right theorist, University of Tennessee constitutional law, Glenn H. Reynolds, "A Critical Guide to the Second Amendment", 62 TENN. L. REV. 461 (1995). For its acceptance even by vigorous opponents of that model see, e.g., John Randolph Prince, "The Naked Emperor: The Second Amendment and the Failure of Originalism," 40 BRAND L. J. 659, 694 (2002) Saul Cornell, "Commonplace or Anachronism: The Standard Model, the Second Amendment and the Problem of History in Contemporary Constitutional Theory", 16 CONST. COMM. 229 (1999), Garry Wills, "To Keep and Bear Arms," NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, September 21, 1995 and Andrew D. Herz, "Gun Crazy: Constitutional False Consciousness and Dereliction of Dialogic Responsibilities," 75 BOSTON U. LAW REV. 57 (1995).]

5) With virtually no exceptions, the few articles to the contrary have been written by gun control advocates, mostly by people in the pay of the anti-gun lobby. [See, e.,g. Nicholas J. Johnson , "Shots Across No Man's Land: A Response to Handgun Control, Inc.'s Richard Aborn", 22 FORDHAM URBAN L. J. 441-451 (1995).]

6) In contrast, a very substantial proportion of the standard model articles are written by scholars who ruefully state that they personally support gun control but must honestly admit that the evidence is overwhelming that the Second Amendment precludes banning guns to the general population.
[See Appendix B]

-Don B. Kates
 
Kates continued

Continued -

Appendix A: The following quotations indicate my authority to speak authoritatively on this subject: Sanford Levinson, "The Embarrassing Second Amendment", 99 YALE L. J. 637, fn. 13 (1989) ("The most important single article is almost undoubtedly Kates, ‘Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment, 82 MICH. L. REV. 204'
(1983)."), John Randolph Prince, supra 40 BRAND L. J. at 679 ("The seminal article on the "individual rights" view is, as evidenced by its frequent citation alone, Don B. Kates, Jr.'s "Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment’" ); David G. Browne, "Treating the Pen and the Sword as Constitutional Equals..." 44 Wm & M.
L. REV 2287 , fn. 12 ("The idea of a "standard model" of the Second Amendment probably began with Don B. Kates, Jr.,"Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment’").

Appendix B: The following is a partial list of publications after my
1983 article through 2000 which support the standard model using a variety of differing analyses: Calvin Massey, "Guns, Extremists and the Constitution," 57 WASH & LEE L. Rev. 1095 (2000); Roger Roots, "The Approaching Death of the Collective Right Theory of the Second Amendment," 39 DUQ. L. REV. 71, 88ff. (2000); Andrew M. Wayment, "The Second Amendment: A Guard for Our Future Security," 37 IDAHO L. Rev. 203 (2000); Robert Cottrol, ""Structure, Participation, Citizenship and Rights," 87 GEORGETOWN L. J. 2307 (1999); Nelson Lund, "The End of Second Amendment Jurisprudence: Firearms Disabilities and Domestic Violence Restraining Orders" 4 TX REV. L & POLITICS 181 (1999); David B.
Kopel "The Second Amendment in the Nineteenth Century", 1998 BRIG. YOUNG L. REV. 1359; Kevin Worthen, "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Light of Thornton: The People and Essential Attributes of Sovereignty," 1998 BRIG. YOUNG L. REV. 137; Eugene Volokh, "The Commonplace Second Amendment" 73 N.Y.U. L. REV. 793 (1998) and "The Amazing Vanishing Second Amendment, 73 N.Y.U. L. REV. 831, Brannon P. Denning, "Gun Shy:
The Second Amendment as an 'Underenforced Constitutional Norm'", 21 HAR.
J. L. & PUB. POL. 719 (1998), Brannon P. Denning, "Professional Discourse, The Second Amendment and the 'Talking Head Constitutionalism'
Counterrevolution," 21 SIU L. REV. 227 (1997); Nicholas J. Johnson, "The Intersection of Abortion and Gun Rights" 50 RUTGERS L. REV. 97 (1997); Thomas McAffee & Michael J. Quinlan "Bringing Forward The Right to Keep and Bear Arms: Do Text, History or Precedent Stand in the Way?", 75 U.
N.C. L. Rev. 781-899 (1997); Brannon P. Denning & Glenn Harlan Reynolds, "It Takes a Militia: A Communitarian Case for Compulsory Arms Bearing,"
5 WM. & M. BILL OF RTS. J. 185 (1997); L. A. Scot Powe, Jr., "Guns, Words and Interpretation," 38 WM. & M. L. REV. 1311-1403 (1997); Robert Dowlut, "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms: A Right to Self-Defense Against Criminals and Despots," 8 STANFORD LAW & POLICY REV. 25 (1997); Nicholas J. Johnson, "Plenary Power and Constitutional Outcasts: Federal Power, Critical Race Theory and the Second, Ninth and Tenth Amendments,"
57 Ohio St. L. J. 1556 (1996); Thomas McAffee, "Constitutional Limits on Regulating Private Militia Groups," 58 MONT. L. REV. 45 (1997); David B.
Kopel & Christopher Little, "Communitarians, Neo-Republicans, and Guns:
Assessing the Case for Firearms Prohibition," MARYLAND L. REV. # 2 (1997); Brannon P. Denning, "Palladium of Liberty? Cause and Consequences of the Federalization of State Militias in the Twentieth Century," 21 OKLA. CITY U. L. REV. 191 (1997); David B. Kopel & Joseph Olson, "Preventing a Reign of Terror: Civil Liberties Implications of Terrorism Legislation," 21 OKLA. CITY U. L. REV. 247 (1997); Brannon P.
Denning, "Professional Discourse, The Second Amendment and the 'Talking Head Constitutionalism' Counterrevolution: A Review Essay," 21 SIU L J
227 (1997); Kevin D. Szezepanski, "Searching for the Plain Meaning of the Second Amendment," 44 BUFF. L. REV. 197 (1996); Nelson Lund, "The Past and Future of the Individual's Right to Arms," 31 GEORGIA LAW REVIEW 1 (1996); Scott Bursor, "Toward a Functional Framework for Interpreting the Second Amendment," 74 Texas Law Review 1125-1151 (1996); Brannon Denning, "Can the Simple Cite Be Trusted: Lower Court Interpretations of United States v. Miller and the Second Amendment," 26 CUMBERLAND L. REV. 961-1004 (1996); Anthony Dennis, "Clearing the Smoke from the Right to Bear Arms and the Second Amendment", 29 Akron Law Review 57-92 (1995); Gregory Lee Shelton, "In Search of the Lost
Amendment: Challenging Federal Firearms Regulation Through Utilization of the State's Right Interpretation of the Second Amendment," 1995 FLORIDA STATE U. L. REV.; David B. Kopel, "It Isn't About Duck Hunting:
The British Origins of the Right to Arms", 93 MICH. L. REV. 1333 (1995); Michael J. Quinlan "Is There a Neutral Justification for Refusing to Implement the Second Amendment or is the Supreme Court Just 'Gun Shy,'"
22 CAPITAL U. L. REV. 641 (1995); T. Markus Funk, "Is the True Meaning of the Second Amendment Really Such A Riddle?" 39 HOWARD L. J. 411 (1995);; Inge Anna Larish, "Why Annie Can't Get a Gun: A Feminist Appraisal of the 2nd Am.", 1996 U. Ill. Law F. 467; T. Markus Funk, "Gun Control and Economic Discrimination: The Melting-Point Case-in-Point",
85 J. CRIM. & CRIMINOL. 764, 776-789 (1995); Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, "'The Fifth Auxiliary Right'", 104 YALE L. J.
995-1026 (1994); William Van Alstyne, "The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Arms", 43 DUKE L. J. 1236-1255 (1994); Glenn H.
Reynolds "A Critical Guide to the Second Amendment, 62 TENN. L. REV.
461-512 (1995); Jeremy Rabkin, "Constitutional Firepower: New Light on the Meaning of the Second Amendment," 86 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOL. 231-246 (1995); Robert J. Cottrol & Raymond T. Diamond, "'Never Intended to be Applied to the White Population': Firearms Regulation and Racial Disparity, The Redeemed South's Legacy to a National Jurisprudence?", 70 CHICAGO-KENT L. REV. 1307 (1995); Nicholas J. Johnson , "Shots Across No Man's Land: A Response to Handgun Control, Inc.'s Richard Aborn", 22 FORDHAM URBAN L. J. 441-451 (1995); David Vandercoy, "The History of the Second Amendment", 28 VALPARAISO L. REV. 1006 (1994); William A. Walker, Review, 88 MICH. L. REV. 1409-14 (1990); Nelson Lund , "The Second Amendment, Political Liberty and the Right to Self-Preservation", 39 ALA. L. REV. 103-130 (1987); Glenn H. Reynolds, "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms Under the Tennessee Constitution", 61 TENN. L. REV. 647 (1994) (extensively discussing the Second Amendment in relation to the Tennessee Constitution); Leonard M. Levy, ORIGINAL INTENT AND THE FRAMERS' CONSTITUTION 341 (Macmillan, 1988); (1986); Robert Shalhope, "The Armed Citizen in the Early Republic", 49 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 125 (1986); Joyce Lee Malcolm, "The Right of the People to Keep and Bear
Arms: The Common Law Tradition", 10 HAST. CONST. L. Q. 285 (1983).
Stepehn P. Halbrook, "What the Framers Intended: A Linguistic Interpretation of the Second Amendment", 49 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 153
(1986) and "Rationing Firearms Purchases and the Right to Keep Arms" 96 W. VA. L. REV. 1 (1993); Martire, "In Defense of the Second Amendment:
Constitutional and Historical Perspectives" 21 LINC. L. REV. 23 (1993);
Comment: "Gun Control Legislation and the Intent of the Second
Amendment: To What Extent is There an Individual Right to keep and Bear Arms?" 37 VILLANOVA L. REV. 1407 (1992); O'Hare and Pedreira, "An Uncertain Right: The Second Amendment and the Assault Weapon Legislation Controversy", 66 ST. JOHN L. REV. 179 (1992); Robert Dowlut, "Bearing Arms in State Bills of Rights, Judicial Interpretation, and Public Housing" 5 ST. THOMAS LAW REVIEW 203 (1992); Moncure, "The Second Amendment Ain't About Hunting", 34 HOW. L. J. 589 (1991); Halbrook, "The Right of the People or the Power of the State: Bearing Arms, Arming Militias, and t he Second Amendment", 26 VALPARAISO L. REV. 131 (1991); Tahmassebi, "Gun Control and Racism", 2 GEO MASON CIV. RTS. L. J. 67 (1991); Bordenet, "The Right to Possess Arms: the Intent of the Framers of the Second Amendment", 21 U.W.L.A. L. REV. 1 (1990); Moncure, "Who is the Militia - The Virginia Ratifying Convention and the Right to Bear Arms", 19 LINC. L. REV. 1 (1990); Morgan, "Assault Rifle Legislation:
Unwise and Unconstitutional", 17 AM. J. CRIM. L.143 (1990); Robert Dowlut, "Federal and State Constitutional Guarantees to Arms", 15 U.
DAYTON L. REV. 59 (1989); Halbrook, "Encroachments of the Crown on the Liberty of the Subject: Pre-Revolutionary Origins of the Second Amendment, 15 U. DAYTON L. REV. 91 (1989); Hardy,"The Second Amendment and the Historiography of the Bill of Rights", 4 J. LAW & POLITICS 1 (1987); Hardy, "Armed Citizens, Citizen Armies: Toward a Jurisprudence of the Second Amendment", 9 HARV. J. LAW & PUB. POLICY 559 (1986); Dowlut, "The Current Relevancy of Keeping and Bearing Arms", 15 U. BALT.
L. FOR. 32 (1984).
 
That consensus no longer exists — thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading liberal law professors, who have come to embrace the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns.

That's not how I have seen things develop. Let me alter the quote a bit for accuracy:

That consensus no longer exists — thanks largely to the gradual concessions over the last 20 years of several leading liberal law professors, who have been dragged kicking and screaming by the overwhelming evidence to the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns.

The idea that liberal professors were the impetus behind the change in legal scholarship on the 2nd amendment is absurd. They just got tired of trying to refute the arguments of pro-gun scholars and finding their side had virtually no evidence for the "collective rights" theory, and further that "collective rights" make no sense in the first place. A few (notably Lawrence Tribe) are honest and rational enough that they get really uncomfortable advancing losing arguments against all evidence, and they decided to join the other side. They did NOT create the other side, as this article implies. It is thanks to the work of the other side, not the liberal gun grabbers, that the liberals finally came around on this issue.

The first two editions of Professor Tribe’s influential treatise on constitutional law, in 1978 and 1988, endorsed the collective rights view. The latest, published in 2000, sets out his current interpretation.

And he would have corrected his earlier views WITHOUT a large pro-gun community out there making his views look silly? I don't think so. That's why this bit completely pegged my BS meter hard enough to bend the needle against the stop pin.

thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading liberal law professors

Yeah, right. All by their little selves. :rolleyes:
 
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