The ‘gun problem’ is not in the Tea Party

Kurt Hoffmam

Adam Winkler, who teaches Constitutional law at UCLA, claims in a Daily Beast article that Tea Party candidates’ support of gun rights is “radical.”

A traditionally hot topic in election season, gun control has been conspicuously absent from the recent candidate debates. This would not be of note if the candidates themselves had no designs on changing the nation’s gun laws. Yet many of the Tea Party candidates, who portray themselves as focused on economic issues like excessive government bailouts and lower taxes, have a radical gun agenda. They seek an extreme roll back of the nation’s gun laws.

If proposals to make gun laws in the U.S. less oppressive are “extreme,” that can only be because of the extreme distance to be covered, before we will have returned to anywhere near shall not be infrnged.

The first target of Winkler’s ire is the Firearms Freedom Act movement, whereby guns, ammunition, and firearm accessories manufactured in one state, to be kept within that state, are not subject to federal regulation (because the legitimacy of federal authority to regulate such things rests completely within the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution). Such legislation has, over the past year or so, been signed into law in eight states, although it is facing stiff opposition from the federal government (which tends to enjoy any power it manages to usurp, the Constitution be damned).

Winkler chides Tea Party candidates like Rand Paul, running for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky, and Joe Miller, U.S. Senate candidate in Alaska, for framing their support for the Firearms Freedom Act as stemming from the principles of state sovereignty and the 10th Amendment, when what they really want, according to Winkler, is “to eliminate gun control.” Personally, I can’t imagine how seeking the elimination of “gun control”–restoring meaning to shall not be infringed, in other words–can be a bad thing, but even if it is, the fact remains that the only Constitutional justification for federal regulation of guns comes in the form of federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Winkler then claims that Rand Paul “shows his true colors,” by promising to oppose all “gun control.” Wait a second, Professor–I thought you were objecting to candidates like Rand Paul trying to hide their “radical” plans to get the federal government out of the “gun control” business–now you’re upset with him for openly stating that he intends just that?

Winkler also borrows from the Josh Horwitz playbook, with frequent use of the word “insurrectionist” (although he doesn’t insist on capitalizing it every time, as Horwitz does). No discussion of guns, Tea Party “extremism”, and “insurrectionist” sentiments would be complete without some hand-wringing over Tea Party-endorsed Sharron Angle’s (U.S. Senate candidate in Nevada) warnings about the possibility of “Second Amendment remedies.” Just as Josh Horwitz did back in June, and the Brady Campaign’s Dennis “What People?” Henigan did in August, Winkler sees an advantage in portraying a warning as an endorsement.

I have seen two or three instances of Ms. Angle referring to “Second Amendment remedies,” but I have never known her to recommend them. Horwitz even quotes her expressing hope that violence does not enter the equation:

And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that’s not where we’re going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around?

One cannot help but wonder if Winkler, Horwitz, and Henigan would like to blame meteorologists who issue severe weather warnings, for “advocating” hurricanes and tornadoes.

If advocating keeping the federal government on the Constitution’s short leash is “extreme”–well, you tell ’em, Mr. Goldwater.

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