<p>I find it totally engaging. :)</p>
<p>This is one event where it appears our government will correct itself after some 70 years of near-complete suppression of a personal right to one of recognition of that basic right and finally complete legal and political realization of that right.</p>
<p>What makes this topic particularly interesting is the concept of ideas and principles of human rights being more important than personal politics. The admittedly liberal scholars of the law articulated the personal right view repeatedly. That’s correct - apparently the first credible (embraced?) published analyses of A2 came from law professors who were perhaps aghast to see they had to reckon with what they considered an embarrassing personal right. Then, and most importantly, these scholars used the greatest of personal integrity to research and publish their findings which directly contradicted their personal politics. Simply magnificent.</p>
<p>Here’s one of those analyses and a snippet from the text: </p>
<p>Stanford Levinson’s *The Embarrassing Second Amendment<a href=“Yale%20Law%20Journal,%20Volume%2099,%20pp.%20637-659”>/i</a>
<a href=“http://www.constitution.org/mil/embar2nd.txt[/url]”>http://www.constitution.org/mil/embar2nd.txt</a></p>
<p>*The Second Amendment, though, is radically different from these other
pieces of constitutional text just mentioned, which all share the
attribute of being basically irrelevant to any ongoing political
struggles. To grasp the difference, one might simply begin by noting
that it is not at all unusual for the Second Amendment to show up in
letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines. [26] That judges and
academic lawyers, including the ones that write casebooks, ignore it is
most certainly not evidence for the proposition that no one else cares
about it. The National Rifle Association, to name the most obvious
example, cares deeply about the Amendment, and an apparently serious
Senator of the United States averred that the right to keep and bear
arms is the “right most valued by free men.” [27] Campaigns for Congress
in both political parties, and even presidential campaigns, may turn on
the apparent commitment of the candidates to a particular view of the
Second Amendment. This reality of the political process reflects the
fact that millions of Americans, even if (or perhaps especially if) they
are not academics, can quote the Amendment and would disdain any
presentation of the Bill of Rights that did not give it a place of
pride.</p>
<p>I cannot help but suspect that the best explanation for the absence of
the Second Amendment from the legal consciousness of the elite bar,
including that component found in the legal academy, [28] is derived
from a mixture of sheer opposition to the idea of private ownership of
guns and the perhaps subconscious fear that altogether plausible,
perhaps even “winning,” interpretations of the Second Amendment would
present real hurdles to those of us supporting prohibitory regulation.
Thus the title of this essay --The Embarrassing Second Amendment – for
I want to suggest that the Amendment may be profoundly embarrassing to
many who both support such regulation and view themselves as committed
to zealous adherence to the Bill of Rights (such as most members of the
ACLU). Indeed, one sometimes discovers members of the NRA who are
equally committed members of the ACLU, differing with the latter only on
the issue of the Second Amendment but otherwise genuinely sharing the
libertarian viewpoint of the ACLU.*</p>
<p>I may actually be outing myself as a bit of a liberal here, but I have written to the ACLU about A2. I refused to support many other common interests I share with them unless they recognize A2 as much as they do A1. </p>
<p>We are currently deadlocked over A2.</p>