Loose Notes (including Dellinger and Gura recaps)
Eight security people with curly cords in their ears stood stone-faced facing the audience as we entered and after we were seated. They moved aside before the Justices entered. The D.C. police chief (on the side arguing to disarm the public) was disarmed before being allowed to enter. Armed Supreme Court Police were everywhere (the federal government now has more than 70 armed police forces, including egg inspector police, print shop police (not the place where money is printed, those are different police) and environmental protection agency police).
I keep trying to dissect the transcript but I find I can’t add anything to all the commentary that’s been done, and all the public record that’s been accumulated. What was said that day is precisely known. What it means is speculative, and everyone’s got an opinion, why muddy the waters with my own. My initial impressions, good and bad, have been softened, adjusted, modified, better digested, added to and subtracted from, and have matured with time, the counsel of learned friends, reading, and time for reflection. All that matters now is waiting for the next set of official words, the decision.
It seemed to me like Gura did get the job done, which was to get the Justices to recognize that the D.C. law can’t stand in the face of an individual right embodied in the Second Amendment. That’s all that was on trial in the thinly sliced baloney of the Supreme Court’s method. Machine guns, a thinly veiled tangent and effort to subvert the main question, was neatly sidestepped by Gura, and likely prepared for in advance, although this raised some hackles and definitely has a downside -- even though it was not material to the solitary goal of overturning D.C.’s ban on other guns at home.
The things that stuck with me on the “ugh” list in Gura’s arguments, which got far less mouth in public commentary but left me cold when the words first passed my ears in that Courtroom:
1- Safe storage provisions would be reasonable even under strict scrutiny (but... “A gun that’s safe isn’t worth anything” says Col. Jeff Cooper; and this would satisfy one of the anti’s goals -- guns are OK as long as they don’t work.)
2- There’s no problem with a required license depending on the terms (...but there’s no way a writer’s license would ever pass muster is there; and a license implies an immediate (and then expanding) tax, test, regulatory framework, registration, privacy denial, criminalization for failure to have papers, bureaucracy and (double ugh) expiration dates -- all totally unacceptable in the proper operation of a right. Open carry where I live requires absolutely none of that and it’s fine, because it harmonizes perfectly with laws outlawing criminals. I might lose that freedom?
3- Reasonable infringement (what a horrific term) is OK, as long as reasonable is defined well. Don’t even get me started. Laws addressing criminal activity and rights infringement are not the same thing -- the former is fine, the latter is unacceptable.
4- Crime statistics can be used to determine what’s reasonable and set policy, but stats are unreliable -- what was he hoping to accomplish with that? It stands -- but only if you believe rights are subject to cost-benefit analysis. I tend to reject that.
And on Dellinger’s side, I did like how he got caught in various varieties of BS:
1- He said the city would carve out an exception for self defense (except their law doesn’t, and Gura noted when they’ve had court opportunities they rejected that (boy that felt good, watching them get caught);
2- He can take his gun lock off his gun in three seconds (even with the gun and key in his hand that’s a stretch; Page Nine newsmedia watchblog #43 calls it "guns can be unlocked and re-loaded by an old lawyer in the dark in just three seconds");
3- And he denied he’d have to load the thing after he unlocked it (and also showed he didn’t understand how guns and locks work, in fact, I got the impression sitting there, watching his hands move, he had never actually handled a real gun and lock during all his mock trials and prep, what an oversight). And then he got nicely publicly humiliated for it by the Chief Justice, with the comment about finding your reading glasses first. Come to think of it, he couldn’t legally have had a gun and unlocked it in D.C., he would have needed a gun-owning friend (he has these?) outside the city to set that up for him.
4- He said a rifle is better for home self defense than a sidearm -- first time I ever heard that -- would any trainer reading this please write to me if you agree with that -- which member of his team gave him that delicious bit of advice;
5- Handguns may be more dangerous than machine guns (well, if you really really know what you’re doing and you’re facing an idiot, maybe, but we sure don’t train soldiers that way).
The young city lawyer sitting a seat away from me (another seat?) seemed to be keeping a ball score, (I glanced over and kept track) putting what looked like Justices’ initials under the headings “CR” and “IR” which I took to mean Collective Right and Individual Right. Under CR he only had two, JS and DS, the rest were under IR. He didn’t have a happy look.
Thomas didn’t have anything to say in open court, as is his style, but he had plenty to say. He leaned over to Breyer as Mr. Clement began his presentation, and they conversed for perhaps three minutes, and then again at least once. Both of them missed key elements of Clement while talking and listening to each other. Thomas did most of the talking. He was also inclined to hold his face in both hands and rub it, as if refreshing himself, staying alert. Breyer held his slumped head in his hands as if he were in an awful class. Since there are no photos, and the artists work hard to make everyone look good, these images do not emerge from the High Court.
Read more: News Distortions
Tags: D.C. v. Heller, Supreme Court
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