History Matters

 Tom Knighton, at Bearing Arms has a piece today entitled Actually, History Does Matter in which he defends the Bruen decision against a editorial writer who says history doesn't matter unless it is anti-gun history. Then it matters. Our editorialist wants to have it both ways.

The Bruen decision changed things regarding gun laws in America. For the first time, lower courts were expressly directed to look not at their own feelings or some compelling governmental interest on gun control, but the history of this nation.

In short, if a historical analog doesn’t exist for a gun law at particular points in time, the law is unconstitutional.

To say that this bothers some people is putting it mildly. While they don’t even blink about the First or Fourth Amendments applying to the digital world, they think permitted guns should remain in some kind of status.

And they love to claim that history isn’t a particularly good guide.

"The framers of our Constitution penned the Second Amendment over two centuries ago. Today, the meaning of that amendment is being endlessly debated. In any debate that impacts gun laws, protecting the safety of citizens must always be the first priority. It hasn’t always been."

No, protecting people’s rights must always be the first priority.

Indeed. The Court should apply the same test to other of our enumerated rights.

The two-faced nature of this anti-gun screed comes when he cites recent history after saying that history doesn't matter:

"In 1986, President Reagan signed legislation that banned private citizens from owning fully automatic guns, with few exceptions. In 1994, during the Clinton years, Congress passed into law a bill that banned the manufacture and sale of certain semi-automatic assault-style guns for civilian use. The bill included a ban on high-capacity magazines. At the time, three former presidents – Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan – wrote to the U.S. House of Representatives to support that legislation. Ten years later, in 2004, a Republican Congress allowed that law to expire, and those rapid-fire long guns and high-capacity magazines were once again flowing into our society and into our public places."

"Our military protects us from rogue nations. Who is protecting our kids sitting in a classroom?"

"President Reagan took legislative action against powerful guns in our society. We now have a new generation of guns as dangerous as those he acted against. Why aren’t Republicans in Congress following his lead? Some will blame our nation’s Second Amendment, but the Second Amendment doesn’t protect any type of gun. Presidents Reagan and Clinton have shown us that."

The Bruen decision prevents the courts from just interpreting our right to armed defense away from us into a nullity. History does matter. If we wish to preserve our nation as founded, then we must pay attention to our history, both the good and the bad.