The problem with experts isn’t that they don’t get everything right, so long as they’re not the ones in control of everything. Technocracy sounds alluring to some, but when the experts get it wrong, societies suffer in such schemes. For journalists, though, the term “expert” is often thrown around without a whole lot of reason. Especially when the word is used to lend credence with an axe to grind.
Enter the USA Today story I wrote about on Monday.
As I noted at the time, all of the “experts” cited as such are anti-gun, though one member of GOA was quoted in the piece. It was ridiculous, but it’s par for the course.
I didn’t harp on this fact at the time because I wanted to address the so-called argument. Lee Williams, over at The Gun Writer, did. He focused on Joseph Blocher of the Duke Center for Firearm Law. This is a center that recently hired a die-hard anti-gunner to run it, so there was already reason to be concerned, but then Lee gets to the important part.
Joseph Blocher is a law professor at Duke University School of Law and cofounder of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, whom Groppe referred to as a “Second Amendment expert.”
Blocher has a history of anti-gun writings. He’s especially anti-Bruen.
In 2022, while testifying before the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee, Blocher noted that the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision “introduced significant unpredictability into Second Amendment law going forward.”
In 2023, he and Professor Darrell A. H. Miller, a law professor at the University of Chicago School of Law who cofounded Duke Center for Firearms Law with Blocher, wrote that “guns can create fear, intimidation, and social trauma; deter civic participation and the exercise of constitutional rights; and further entrench racial inequality.”
Blocher was relatively mild in Groppe’s story, although he referred to legitimate gun ownership as a “debate” rather than a constitutional right.
“These weapons have become very, very wrapped up in identity on many sides of the debate,” Blocher said. “The stakes are high.”
Miller, too, emphasized this mythical debate over the Second Amendment.
“When they come down with decisions that ask questions like, `Is a modern jet airplane more like a horse, or is it more like a carriage, or is it more like a boat?’ I think people that are paying attention just feel a little bewildered,” Miller said. “It’s like, `What kind of odd, elite parlor game is happening up there?’”
The two professors are using that same tactic. Rather than admitting that Bruen is easy to decipher, far from complex and law, they describe it as bewildering and a debate. However, we shall see whether a majority of Supreme Court justices are able to somehow understand and grasp their previous decision, in about a year.
And, honestly, Bruen really isn’t. What’s more, as so-called Second Amendment experts, they should be able to recognize what historic analogs are and aren’t. This isn’t comparing very different modes of transportation through the ages, but laws controlling the purchase, ownership, and carrying of firearms, which have been part of the fabric of the United States since its inception.
Do the old laws from around that time, or around the time of the 14th Amendment, look anything like the gun law in question? No, then it’s unconstitutional. It’s not rocket science.
The reason they say the water is muddied is that Blocher is anti-gun and the Bruen decision makes it too hard for them to make an argument in favor of gun control. To me, that’s it. That’s the entirety of why they find it difficult and problematic. That’s what it really boils down to.
And the reason USA Today reached out wasn’t that people like Blocher are the actual experts, but because they can get the “right” opinion from the “experts.” They couldn’t reach out to any expert on the Second Amendment who hasn’t articulated an anti-gun position because, ultimately, that might show that people like Miller, Blocher, and Adam Winkler really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
Par for the course with the mainstream media, unfortunately.
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