The NRA and Heller: No Guts, No Glory

In a lengthy (and copyrighted) article, Brian Doherty 'splains Heller.

And he shows the NRA to have been on the wrong side.

...The Heller case quickly found a powerful opponent in the National Rifle Association. This surprises nearly every layman I discuss the case with, most of whom assume the NRA was behind the lawsuit in the first place. The Parker lawyers received backroom visits from allies of the NRA before their case was filed, discouraging them from going forward. The Supreme Court (which still had Sandra Day O’Conner back then) would not reliably deliver a victory, they argued, and an authoritative statement from the Supremes that the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right could prove devastating to the long-term cause.

This was an intellectually respectable objection, the Levy team thought, but ultimately too fearful. If no one would fight for the Second Amendment qua Second Amendment in a relevant case, then its supposed paladins were as complicit in its irrelevance as were the most rabid partisans for the idea that the Second Amendment only applied to militias and is thus a dead letter.

There were a lot of other twists and turns, some of which will assist the Obama Administration in making gun purchase/possession more difficult.

Read the whole thing.

HT: Of Arms and the Law