Dahlia Lithwick, unpredictable as always (lol) cites approvingly the opinion of yet another dreary, 'push button/get quote' law professor that more people will be killed because of the Supreme Court's pro-choice decision on private arms ownership today. The evidence for this scabrous statement is . . . ? Has DC enjoyed a dramatic fall in murder rates and violent crime since the handgun ban was imposed? I didn't think so . . . As sophisticated NRA members and other pro-choice advocates are aware, but most cookie-cutter journalists are apparently not, there is no such evidence relating gun laws to increased killing or violence. In fact, violent crime has risen in Britain as private gun ownership has been virtually outlawed. You are now as likely to be mugged or raped in London as in New York, if not more so.

Really, what do you do when the chattering classes have their own set of emotional and even irrational views? These views are invariably presented, such being the nature of the chattering classes, as backed up by 'reason' and 'science'. This is a clear case in which those rationalizations of simple 'make the icky guns go away' symbolic actions are easily refuted. The crime rates of Washington, DC, since 1976 when the gun ban was imposed, strongly suggest that this is another case in which reality has a conservative bias, and more regulations are strictly there to make politicians and liberal political activists, feel that they are 'doing something' and feel virtuous about themselves.

Over and above that . . . what is it about, say, our narcotics laws or immigration laws that persuades so many nice and otherwise intelligent people that gun laws don't cause more problems than they solve? Now maybe we can stop focusing on symbols, and figure out what methods really can reduce violent crime.

Exactly - I remember reading that info about Britain for a Poli Sci class.

It's still not clear to me what gun ownership's effect on the death rate could possibly have on the meaning of the 2nd Amendment and the Constitutionality of a law banning handguns.

Judges aren't supposed to legislate for the good of the people. They're to ensure that the laws, good or bad, violate the Constituional contract which, for better or worse, gives the government legitimacy.

Please don't take Dahlia's views as representative of the legal profession as a whole. Her ability to perform legal analysis is, as far as I can see, non-existent; she's a social activist who somehow managed to acquire a law degree.

fsliber is correct. The Supreme Court is supposed to interpret the plain text of the Constitution. Yesterday's ruling can be criticized for overriding local statutes - 'judicial activism' of the political Right, for a change. My post was mainly criticizing the hysterical attitude of some professors and journalists when it comes to an emotional issue such as gun ownership by ordinary private citizens. No matter how much evidence there is that gun laws have no effect or even a negative effect on the amount of violence that goes on in a society, they still cling (to borrow from Barack Obama) to their anti-gun attitudes and pseudo-utopian secular religions. On this issue and others I find that many of the writers who populate Slate to be dogmatically avoidant of arguments and data that challenge their emotional preferences.

I believe any honest and unprejudiced study would indicate that the 'diversity' of a geographical region (ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural) is a far better predictor of rates of violent crime and murder than formal laws. Japan (which just executed a serial killer - I thought only the barbaric U.S. did such things) has low murder rates mainly as a function of its ethnic/cultural conformity. Crime and murder rates among Japanese Americans is about the same as it is among Japanese Japanese. Well, middle-class liberals are all into 'diversity', which is fine, but they should have the guts to acknowledge that it is a far more important factor in crime and murder rates than gun laws. 'Gun control' is a silly diversion.