Not since the conservative commentariat bought into the notion of a permanent Republican majority have the professional analysts of the right been more off-base about a political event than they have in the post-mortem of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the case of the Washington, D.C., gun ban. The court’s acknowledgement of an individual right to gun ownership is being trumpeted as a major victory, and while it is certainly a good thing, the careful observer will note that seeds of strategic defeat have been sown even as the tactical victory is harvested.

It is true that Heller is not, in itself, a defeat for freedom-loving forces who do not wish to see law-abiding citizens forcibly disarmed by the state. Had the decision gone the other way – and it is deeply troubling that four justices saw fit to invent a fictitious collective rights interpretation – then Heller would have been a terrible defeat for those who still believe the U.S. Constitution is more than just another piece of paper. Upholding the D.C. gun ban would have been tantamount to a confession by the court that there is no written law anymore, that American law is nothing more than the dynamic product of fevered legal imaginations belonging to an unelected legal priesthood.  Full Piece