Ashcroft’s Gunslinger Style

So now Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft thinks he gets to rewrite the Constitution to reflect his personal opinions. His pronouncement this week that the 2nd Amendment guarantees individuals the right to own guns, despite six decades of federal policy and U.S. Supreme Court decisions to the contrary, is another audacious move by a man who mistakenly thinks his job is to make, not enforce, the law.

Ashcroft’s declaration came in footnotes in two briefs the Justice Department filed in pending appeals. In them, he rejects the long-held interpretation that the 2nd Amendment guarantees gun rights only to militias, not individuals.

He declares, “The current position of the United States ... is that the 2nd Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals ... who are not members of any militia ... to possess and bear their own firearms, subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse.”

Since the 1930s, the federal government and the courts, including the Supreme Court, have spoken with one voice in declaring that people have no constitutional right to own a gun and that government can pass laws restricting gun possession.

Ashcroft’s “reasonable restrictions” language is so narrow as to turn 2nd Amendment law inside out by guaranteeing that individuals are entitled to own guns unless they fit a few defined exceptions. The attorney general is wrong in his characterization of federal law, which has historically elevated government’s right to regulate weapons over individual rights. And as an appointed official, he’s way out of line in insisting that his own views prevail over those of the elected representatives charged with writing laws and judges whose job it is to interpret them.

Ashcroft first expressed his views more than a year ago to the National Rifle Assn. As an NRA member, he’s entitled to his opinion. But what about the people scared of being shot at the office by an angry co-worker or of their child being harmed by a weapon carelessly stored at a neighbor’s house? Most Americans want tighter controls on gun manufacturing and sales.

Ashcroft’s tutorial on the 2nd Amendment is only his latest attempt to bully the nation into adopting his personal beliefs no matter what the law and court precedents say. In November, this fervent opponent of assisted suicide directed federal drug agents to go after Oregon doctors in assisted-suicide cases, even though the practice is legal in that state. And since Sept. 11, the attorney general has ordered mass detentions of those charged with immigration violations, held suspects in secret and ordered deportation hearings held behind closed doors--practices that federal courts are declaring unconstitutional. In the same vein, the federal courts should take note of Ashcroft’s reckless and revisionist view of the 2nd Amendment--and explicitly reject it.