Facts and law aside, gun control advocates are right

With an inevitability that borders on a physical law, liberals greeted the Supreme Court's decision striking down Chicago's gun ban with a torrent of histrionics. Kicking things off: Retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, who warned that the McDonald ruling "could prove far more destructive - quite literally - to our nation's communities" than the precedent case, Heller.

He was hardly alone. The ruling is "bad news for democracy and public safety," warned the Kansas City Star. "Today's decision will only add to" the firearms death toll, wrote the Violence Policy Center's Josh Sugarman, who insisted that "more guns means more gun death." The McDonald ruling "moves us toward anarchy," shrieked The Washington Post's David Ignatius. "Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts and other enthusiasts for our newly-created universal right to bear arms should take a trip to Beirut or Baghdad and see how this idea works out in practice."

Oh dear. Entertaining as it may be, all of this wailing and gnashing of teeth overlooks a couple of important things. The first is that it is - well, utterly wrong.

Gun-control advocates made the same predictions nearly a quarter-century ago, after Florida adopted concealed-carry legislation that opponents called "terrifying" and "a demonic absurdity." News reports noted that "Gun Sales Soar Under State's New Liberalized Law." What happened? Florida's crime rate dropped. The same thing happened again in Virginia. After the passage of a 1995 law requiring judges to issue concealed-carry permits except in rare instances, Virginia's murder rate fell.

The pattern repeated after the Supreme Court's ruling two years ago in Heller, which overturned the District of Columbia's ban on gun ownership. "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," lamented Mayor Adrian Fenty, echoing a thousand similar laments across the country. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley predicted a return of "the days of the Wild West." Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin warned that "there is no question" Heller "makes it harder for all mayors to keep their city safe."

No question - except that, after the ruling, violent crime fell. It fell even faster in the District of Columbia than in the U.S. as a whole. In 2009 alone, the District's murder total dropped 25 percent, to the lowest level since 1967.

The Heller decision was followed by the election of Barack Obama, which prompted a frenzy of gun-buying. "Gun Sales Up Since Election," "Obama Driving Surge in Gun Sales, Firearms Groups Say," and countless similar headlines told the tale. And yet the nation's violent-crime rate continued downward. Conservatives might not be right that more guns inevitably leads to less crime. But liberals are categorically wrong that more guns automatically equals more crime.

Another important consideration: The curious logic employed by gun-control advocates. Take The New York Times, which held, "The arguments that led to Monday's decision . . . were infuriatingly abstract, but the results will be all too real and bloody." The court majority "disregarded the plain words of the Second Amendment," the Gray Lady opined, and so mayors and state lawmakers would have to "keep adopting the most restrictive possible gun laws - to protect the lives of Americans and aid the work of law enforcement officials. . . . Too many lives are at stake."

Well. That is not a line of reasoning gracefully employed by a newspaper that has supported (correctly) Miranda rights for accused criminals and habeas corpus rights for suspected terrorists. After all, some conservatives find liberals' arguments about questions such as Miranda and habeas rights "infuriatingly abstract" obstacles that make it harder "to protect the lives of Americans and aid the work of law enforcement officials." But that does not make those arguments wrong.

It would be nice if both sides would demonstrate a little more consistency. If rights are trumps (as legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin puts it) then they remain trumps even when lives are at stake. If they cease to be trumps, then they cease to be rights.

Also clumsy and unbecoming: Gun-control advocates' altogether uncharacteristic embrace of strict constructionism and original intent. Generally speaking, liberals never have been shy about finding "fundamental" rights in the "emanations and penumbras" of the Constitution, which contains no language explicitly mentioning, say, abortion or the right to sexual privacy. How exceedingly odd, then, that they insist the Constitution does not guarantee one of the few rights it actually does explicitly mention.

As for the militia question - well, read Heller. To say the Second Amendment's introductory clause limits gun ownership to a select class is to read this sentence - "a well-fed army being necessary to national defense, the right of the people to keep and grow food shall not be infringed" - as meaning only the army can grow food. It does not follow.

Of course, spikes in gun violence do not follow gun-rights rulings, either. Yet that has not stopped gun-control advocates from falsely predicting them, again and again. So they're wrong on the empirical evidence, the normative considerations and the Constitution. Aside from that, they've got an airtight case.

My thoughts do not aim for your assent - just place them alongside your own reflections for a while.