WaPo Pens 2nd Editorial This Week in Defense of D.C. Gun Ban

Although it already weighed in on Monday about District of Columbia v. Heller, the Post is clearly worried that the Court will find, shockingly enough, an individual right to keep and bear arms in the text of the Second Amendment. So the legal solons at the Post penned a second layman's lame brief, "Judging Guns," in the March 20 paper (emphasis mine):

BY THE END of oral arguments Tuesday in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, a majority of Supreme Court justices seemed to embrace the notion that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Such a conclusion, however, should not automatically prove fatal to the District's admittedly tough gun control law.

Every right, including freedom of speech, is subject to some limitations. The legal and public policy arguments for allowing broad government regulation of firearms are compelling.

[...]

Six justices active in questioning during Tuesday's arguments seemed to at least contemplate an individual rights approach.... We urge the justices to adopt the lowest standard of review to allow governments maximum flexibility in enacting laws meant to protect public safety. If a majority cannot agree on this, we would hope that they would heed the suggestions of Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who argued for a tougher standard but one that clearly permits sensible regulation, such as licensing, background checks and a ban on machine guns.

The Post doesn't explain how "licensing" of firearms can logically exist alongside the individual right to keep a firearm in one's home, or if readers can expect the Post to advocate government-issued licenses for newspapers. After all, it's pretty clear that cartoons of the prophet Muhammad can incite riotous violence, and doesn't government have the need to safeguard the public from riots caused by something stupid a paper like say, the Washington Post, might print? Surely the pen is mightier than the pistol!

The Post also failed to explain why laws "meant to protect public safety" that don't actually achieve the result of heightened public safety -- murders, gun crime are up since 1976 gun ban went into effect -- should trump an explicitly written constitutional guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms.

Although the Post has trumped up fears of gun-riddled anarachy should the Court rule to strike down the gun ban, the Post maintained in an April 19, 2007 editorial an all but an absolutist view of a woman's right to obtain an abortion, which results in the taking of innocent life every time it's exercised and is particularly gruesome in the case of partial birth abortions.