As Dan the Man likes to say, if anti-gunners didn’t have double standards they wouldn’t have any standards at all. The opposition to President Trump’s immigration order reveals their latest hoplophobic hypocrisy. Specifically, the liberal anti-Trumpers’ declaration that the President’s temporary ban on immigration from seven nations violates the U.S. Constitution — which they hold sacrosanct! Now. What about before, when the Second Amendment was under the gun? Not so much. For example . . .
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson led the lawsuit that upended President Trump’s executive order on immigration. Speaking with NPR, the WA AG called the order “unconstitutional and unlawful,” and went on to declare, “We are a nation of laws, and everybody must follow our laws. And that includes the present the United States, and that’s why the order issued by Judge Robart yesterday was so important. It holds even the president accountable to our laws.”
As for the constitutional amendment that declares “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” a mandate that renders Washington State’s recently enacted “universal background check system” unconstitutional, Mr. Ferguson has no time.
In fact, less than a month ago, seattletimes.com reported that Mr. Ferguson unveiled a law that would “ban semi-automatic rifles that have a detachable magazine and a pistol grip beneath the barrel. It would also ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition and semi-automatic pistols with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds of ammunition.”
Mr. Ferguson said banning an entire class of weapons based on arbitrarily selected features is OK (i.e., constitutional) because “laws in New York and Connecticut withstood legal challenges.” Would he say the same about President Trump’s executive order on immigration, based on the fact that President Obama’s EO on immigration went legally unchallenged? He would not.
Regardless of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail, regardless of the motivation behind his EO on immigration, there’s only one legally relevant question: is it constitutional? If it is, regardless of how many people it hurts, it should stand. By the same token, regardless of the “logic” behind gun control, there’s only legally relevant question: is it constitutional? If it isn’t, it should go. And anyone who defends the Constitution should adopt that position.