The most galling part of their argument is the recurrent invocation of—and self-righteous cloaking of their argument in—the language of democracy. “The decision whether a type of arm is too dangerous for ordinary Americans to possess,” they wrote, “is one that the people are entitled to make, not one that courts are empowered to make for them.” They say this, to be clear, in a brief asking the judges of the Supreme Court to make the decision about what weapons can be possessed over the decision of voters. Because the lower courts upheld these laws, the challengers want the justices to tell the citizens of Connecticut, Chicago, and other jurisdictions like California and New York that they cannot make fundamental judgments about public peace and safety...
It seems that judges are empowered to second-guess the decision of the American people if, and only if, gun-rights proponents don’t like it. After all, the American people voted for these laws in more than a third of the country. Connecticut citizens saw an AR-15-style weapon slaughter innocent 6-year-olds and acted to expand their law. The challengers, on the other hand, would have the Supreme Court foreclose that pathway of democratic choice...
It distorts the concept of democracy to cloak oneself in the rhetoric of protecting decisions by “the people” while urging an insulated cadre of educated attorneys to tell the parents who buried their children and then devoted their lives to the prevention of gun violence to shut up and sit down; your voice and your vote do not matter here, the challengers demand the court to decree...
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson expressed the matter best when he wrote for a majority of judges upholding Maryland’s assault-weapon ban: “We shudder to imagine the hubris with which a court would disable representative government at the very moment that lethal technologies are proceeding at an accelerated and indeed unprecedented pace.”
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Spectacular writing.
By this dude.