Fox News Contributor Juan Williams recently penned an opinion piece for the network’s web site titled: “What everybody needs to know about our Constitution and gun control.”
My response to this opinion piece by Mr. Williams begins with the title to my response; Mr. Williams demonstrates his ignorance of the most basic aspects of our fundamental right to bear arms. I will not attempt a line-by-line rebuttal, but will address the more sinister of his misstatements.
1. Gun control is completely consistent with the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
This sort of blanket statement, with no support forthcoming, is at minimum highly deceptive. It also does not address the actual text of the Second Amendment, which states, in relative part: “[t]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Dictionary.com defines “infringe” in two ways: (1) to commit a breach or infraction of; violate or transgress; and (2) to encroach or trespass.
Mr. Williams, in making this statement, is asserting that infringing on something is “completely consistent” with a prohibition upon any infringement. This may seem to be a purely semantic argument and no doubt many like Mr. Williams would dismiss it out of hand.
However, it becomes very important when discussing any court opinions concerning the Second Amendment, which I will get to presently. The important point here is Mr. Williams engages in very sloppy reasoning and argument by suggesting that any restriction he labels as “gun control” is “completely consistent” with a free exercise of a fundamental right.
Any attempt by the government to restrict the free exercise of a fundamental right should be viewed with a healthy dose of suspicion and subjected to a very high bar before it could be allowed to stand.
A primary fallacy on Mr. Williams’ part is his implication that any measure restricting the possession of firearms will naturally result in less violence, thus it must be permissible as a “public safety” measure.
2. The only opinion that matters here is the Supreme Court’s opinion.
I am an attorney by trade and one who has litigated gun rights cases. This statement I find not only incorrect, but dangerously so. I will not delve into the numerous instances where the Supreme Court has issued rulings wholly inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution and either later reversed itself or had its decision nullified in some other manner. Mark R. Levin’s book, “Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America,” would be a good place for Mr. Williams to begin his education. He might also review Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott for starters.
The most important opinions are those who hold the right to bear arms and who would have need to exercise it should that right or any other held by them be threatened. In short, if the Supreme Court were to issue an opinion holding that the only arms allowed to be possessed by Americans were swords, maces, axes and the like, then theirs would certainly not be the only opinion that matters.
The right we are discussing here, and the one that Mr. Williams is so willing to support heavy restrictions on the exercise of, is fundamental. It is, in a legal sense, just as important as the First Amendment, for example.
I would venture to guess that, if there were proposals from the President to severely limit the topics upon which Americans could express views, Mr. Williams would rail loudly against those proposals.
3. Even conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia acknowledged this in his opinion to [sic] Heller. He wrote that the Second Amendment is “not unlimited” and is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
District of Columbia v. Heller is hardly the opinion Mr. Williams should be citing to support his untenable position. Furthermore, Mr. Williams is using this opinion in an even more erroneous way in constructing his straw-man argument. He does this in painting supporters of the Second Amendment as persons who would reject any restriction whatsoever, regardless of its reasoning.
Mr. Williams takes this statement by Justice Scalia and deliberately ignores its context, suggesting that because Justice Scalia allows for possible restrictions, that any such restriction is acceptable. I suspect that Justic Scalia would not approve of Mr. Williams acting as his spokesperson for any reason, much less for the purpose of passing Constitutional judgment on any restriction of a fundamental right.
Mr. Williams also fails to “educate” his readers on what Justice Scalia writes after the statement he quotes:
Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. (Page 54 of the opinion)
Something important to note here in contrasting with Mr. Williams’ opinion piece with the Heller decision is that the examples provided by the Court are of “longstanding” laws. Most of these are laws that, frankly, are not at issue in the current debate because they are already on the books, either in various states or at the federal level.
No Second Amendment supporter I know of has raised a fuss arguing someone who is diagnosed as mentally ill and dangerous should own/possess a firearm. Likewise, persons convicted of violent felonies are not championed by the National Rifle Association or any other group as deserving of the right to own a firearm.
4. …the craziness of a country suffering from repeated mass murders by gunfire.
In this statement Mr. Williams is castigating Rep. Steve Stockman, but my focus is on the tactic being employed by Mr. Williams for another purpose. By using the word “repeated” Mr. Williams no doubt intends for his readers to presume that it is a foregone conclusion that we are experiencing a rapid increase in such crimes and that we have reached some sort of breaking point. Unfortunately for Mr. Williams, it is his opinion that falls before the facts. Even a story by CNN, of all places, indicates that this assertion is untrue.
Regardless, the existence of such a problem does not somehow prove the argument that firearms should be banned or severely restricted. Mr. Williams makes no attempt to support this contention, he simply asserts it as fact.
Dealing yet another blow to Mr. Williams, the New York Times of all publications, admits that a ban on certain rifles would not have stopped the tragedy in Newtown, CT.
5. Article II of the U.S. Constitution clearly grants Obama and any other president the authority and the discretion to issue executive orders with the force of law over the sale of guns and ammunition.
This one is a real whopper. I challenge Mr. Williams to even attempt to support this statement. Article II of the U.S. Constitution says a number of things about the Presidency, but executive orders is not among them. The mere fact that past Presidents have used executive orders does not, by itself, make them proper or Constitutional. To suggest that executive orders, to whatever extent they may be proper, can substitute for legislative action or amendment to the Constitution, is farcical at best.
I would also direct Mr. Williams to this treatise on executive orders by Todd F. Gaziano of the Heritage Foundation so that he might properly educate himself. I believe he will find that his beliefs about Article II are quite unfounded.
It is precisely this sort of blatant abuse of power, supported by Mr. Williams, that the Second Amendment was meant to address. I would refer Mr. Williams to a previous post of mine on the subject. Nevertheless, to assert that Article II “clearly grants” President Obama the power to regulate firearm possession is ignorant and foolish.
6. To be crystal clear: President Obama has the legal authority to enact gun safety measures through executive order. That is not a matter of opinion. It is a statement of fact.
Again, there is absolutely nothing educational about this statement. It is also clearly wrong. Mr. Williams pointing to previous executive orders – whether related to the Second Amendment or not – does nothing to prove his point. At best, the extent to which the federal government may restrict the right to bear arms is a very open legal and political question.
Mr. Williams simply stamping his foot and declaring the issue resolved accomplishes nothing, and it certainly does not educate anyone. Just like President Obama stating that restrictions are coming, no matter what, means nothing other than that he views himself more as a king than a president. We, of course, know how most Americans responded to that almost 250 years ago.
7. Nothing in President Obama’s rhetoric or his record supports the right wing’s claim that he wants to confiscate the guns of law abiding Americans.
Wrong again. Mr. Williams is referred to this story by the Associated Press. Mr. Williams is free to blindly believe Obama’s ridiculous explanation during an election year, but I am not buying what is being sold. I prefer to couple this sort of event with Obama’s well-known penchant for effecting rights-crushing change incrementally. The “boil a frog slowly rather than dropping it into already boiling water” approach.
I direct Mr. Williams to our President’s stated strategy on single-payer healthcare as a fine example of why I do not trust the man on anything, and certainly not as it concerns my right to bear arms:
Click here to view the embedded video.
UPDATE: AWR Hawkins, at Breitbart.com, has this piece on Mr. Obama’s stance on gun ownership, that Mr. Williams should also peruse.
8. The rest of the gun control measures [beyond Dianne Feinstein’s semiautomatic rifle ban] reportedly under consideration by the White House are fairly modest and supported by the vast majority of the American people.
I will decline to get into a protracted poll-measuring contest with Mr. Williams, but will say that the use of polls is fraught with lies, distortions, push-polling, agendas, and any other manner of forces that make reliance on them problematic at best.
That being said, I will direct Mr. Williams to a few polls that directly refute his position.
A Gallup poll indicated that 51% of Americans opposed a ban on what Mr. Williams erroneously refers to as “assault weapons.” That same poll showed that 54% had a favorable view of the NRA, while only 38% held an unfavorable view.
Mr. Williams wants to assert that Second Amendment supporters and organizations like the NRA are marginalized, but he is flatly wrong.
A poll by Rasmussen Reports is seemingly fatal to Mr. Williams’ position, and that of President Obama: “While there are often wide partisan differences of opinion on gun-related issues, even 54% of Democrats agree with 75% of Republicans and 68% of those not affiliated with either major party that the right to own a gun is to ensure such freedom.”
While these polls show, on some questions, support for stricter gun control laws, much of this arises from ignorance of the fact that many restrictions mentioned are already in place. To be blunt, much of the ignorance arises from people like Mr. Williams, who are willing to disseminate inaccuracies and falsehoods to achieve a political end. I accuse Mr. Williams of this because I choose to give him the benefit of the doubt that he is simply not intelligent enough to understand the facts and issues, or that he is lazy and unwilling to uncover the facts.
Checking to see if a gun purchaser is a convicted felon is not what Mr. Obama is after here; it is clear that they oppose firearm possession in a general sense but realize they cannot go straight to such a ban. They will have to nibble away at the right to achieve their goal. Mr. Williams can read this post about Sen. Feinstein’s gun control bill to see another example. They are after handguns as well.
I will also let Sen. Feinstein speak for herself:
Click here to view the embedded video.
If Mr. Williams or anyone else believes this response to be unduly harsh, I would simply respond that, where my fundamental rights are concerned, I will treat any attempt to curb or eliminate them with the utmost suspicion and scrutiny. If you come after my rights with bad facts and distortions, expect my disdain…and wrath.