How will ACLU react to Heller? Pt. 2

They can't believe it? I can't believe them! This is from the ACLU blog, linked by Joe Huffman:

July 1st, 2008
Posted by Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 3:44 pm

Heller Decision and the Second Amendment

So, we’ve been getting a lot of comments about the ACLU’s stance on the Second Amendment. For those of you who didn’t catch our response in the blog comments, here it is again:

"The ACLU interprets the Second Amendment as a collective right. Therefore, we disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller. While the decision is a significant and historic reinterpretation of the right to keep and bear arms, the decision leaves many important questions unanswered that will have to be resolved in future litigation, including what regulations are permissible, and which weapons are embraced by the Second Amendment right that the Court has now recognized."

As always, we welcome your comments.

Joe Huffman's posting is there on the ACLU's blog, along with quite a few others criticizing the ACLU position. I doubt very much that they'll review Policy Statement #47, though, for all the vaunted "independence" of ACLU they are just another left wing pressure group.

Yeah, mine is there with a bunch of others. All of them are very negative. At least their hypocrisy doesn't extend to censoring us on their own blog.

So the ACLU interprets the Second Amendment as a collective right even though not one of the Supreme Court Justices sees it that way?

So what about in states where it is indisputable that the state constitution protects armed self-defense. Will the ACLU support gun rights there? And what about in Pennsylvania where even the dissenting judges admit that "the right to bear arms in defense of themselves" protects individual self-defense?

their position was disappointing enough before Heller; they could have taken the lead on RKBA and painted it as one of their "we've got to defend everybody's rights, even if it's distasteful" stances. it would have been the principled thing to do, but would have taken some foresight and a sense of which way the political winds were blowing. a better such sense than i had, true, but they've reason to be more perceptive than Joe Random Schmoe and me.

now, though, they're just making themselves out to be denying reality, playing ostrich with their head in the sand. it would have been far, far better if that blog entry had read, "we'll need to call a meeting with our managers and lawyers to discuss Heller, read through the decision and most of its referenced works, maybe poll some of our members, and reevaluate our position; until then our former position is on hold, call back in a week or so".

what they're actually saying makes it sound like they think they know better than the SCOTUS and should get to overrule the supreme court of the land. they're making a face-first high dive into a pool full of eggs, and it's embarrassing to even watch.

There are some very strong and critical comments on their blog. What's more, it's crystal clear that their position, especially now, defies logic and defies their core mission. Their position on the second and their core mission now cannot be reconciled. That is a SERIOUS problem for the ACLU.

I cannot help but think there must be (at least)a few on their Board of Directors who will save the organization from the intense embarassment, criticism, and eventual irrelevancy that would result from their hypocracy. I predict that the ACLU will, just as Sanford Levinson, eventually accept that "embarassing second amendment" and make it fit within their core mission.

The ACLU’s position on the 2nd Amendment, before or after “Heller” should come as NO surprise. After all, a BIG chunk of their funding comes from the Joyce Foundation. You won’t see them give up their lattes or limos over something as insignificant as principles.

If it is true that a big chunk of the ACLU's funding comes from the Joyce Foundation, that is an indication that the ACLU will NOT change its position. The Joyce Foundation virtually funds gun control in America.

The Joyce Foundation funded the Chicago/Kent Law Review Symposium on the Second Amendment, which was planned by Carl Bogus to present only one side of the issue and ignore the individual rights viewpoint. The purpose was to influence the Federal Courts, especially in light of the decision in Emerson at the District Court level. Thus, the symposium issue of the law review was intended to more directly influence the Emerson decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. That is the decision which did not rely on the gun control advocate specially prepared bait and instead relied on the Founders' own words. The Emerson decision heavily relied on my document collection to back up the indiviudal rights ruling (104+ citations).

The Joyce Foundation then funded the Second Amendment Research Center at Ohio State University under the directorship of Saul Cornell. To this day, the Research Center staff have apparently not realized that someone collected all of the Founding Era Second Amendment related historical sources and published them back in 1991 in a document collection entitled The Origin of the Second Amendment. Perhaps the title is to ambiguous?

Ohio State University's libraries have three copies of ORIGIN, including two first editions that went out of print in 1995. You would think these volumes were taboo because they are either simply being ignored, or the staff is completely incompetent and cannot locate a book with Second Amendment prominently in the title.

While I am getting a little off of the ACLU here, if a significant part of its funding does come from the Joyce Foundation, then this is actually on topic. It is called follow the money.

Saul Cornell, the director of the Joyce Foundation funded Second Amendment Research Center at Ohio State University is one of the professional academic historians who signed onto a historically related amicus brief supporting Washington DC's gun control laws in the Heller case. There were fifteen academic professionals signed onto the brief and it was apparently written by none other than Carl Bogus, who is a professional adacemic legal scholar. He was the very person who apparently asked for and received the funding for the prior Chicago/Kent Law Review Symposium on the Second Amendment mentioned above.

The Heller amicus brief from the professional academic historians contains obvious errors of historical fact. These errors are the method by which the entire brief gets off Bill of Rights track and onto government control of military track. Read my critique of Bogus' and Cornell's brief at the History News Network:
http://hnn.us/articles/47238.html

Funding is a powerful tool for control. I predict that the ACLU will have to make a choice between having its policy be in line with the historical facts that back up the Heller decision or continuing to receive funds from the Joyce Foundation. I doubt Joyce will provide funding to any organization that supports a private rights view of the Second Amendment.

The Joyce Foundation does contribute to the ACLU, but the donations are a pretty small portion of the ACLU's gross revenue: http://www.capitalresearch.org/search/orgdisplay.html?org=ACL100.

I guess this ruling took out more than the unconstitutional DC gun law, it also unmasked another liberal front group. As if that wasn't clear before the ruling, it's now crystal clear.

America Civil Liberties We Like Group. Just give the money to the NRA forget this shill group that is destroying your rights under the pretext of defending them.

Hah! The ACLU blog appears to have limited the gun comments to 150. Otherwise who know how many more hostile comments would have flooded in.

By my count there are only about three comments out of the 150 that defend the anti-gun position of the ACLU.

(This comment is awaiting moderation)

Suzanne Ito wrote:
"As always, we welcome your comments."

Welcome, as long as they don't exceed 150?

It's your call ... I do realize, mind you, that it's only the government that is barred from abridging free speech.

The ACLU blog has posted a large number of comments that appear to have been held up overnight for posting. The latest comment is #246.

Apparently they have decided to post all the comments they actually receive.

I just cut up my ACLU membership card ("Member since 1990") and will drop it in the mail today with a short letter. There's no point in sending them reams of facts and figures. They knew what they were doing, just not the consequences (minor though they may end up being for them).

The Heller decision gave them the perfect face-saving moment to do the right thing, and they didn't.