The New Yorker Magazine Tells Us All About Guns.

As a charter member of Gun-control Nation, I try to go out of my way to absolve advocates, scholars, and pundits from any criticism when they say or write something about guns which is simply not true. But there comes a point when someone who should a) know better, and b) has a large audience says something which is so egregiously misinformed that I have no choice but to correct their mistakes.

In this case, I am referring to Jill Lepore, who seems to have become the resident gun expert for The New Yorker Magazine, even though this Professor of History at Harvard knows really nothing about guns at all.

Her latest indulgence in gun misinformation can be found in the March 18th print edition of the magazine where she explains her views on the recent decision by the Supreme Court which found the New York law on concealed carry to be a violation of 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’

The decision, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, has been lauded by the pro-gun community as extending the whole notion of the 2nd Amendment beyond the confines of a gun owner’s home, and equally decried by the gun-control community as creating the basis for a greater degree of gun violence than we already have. Lepore, obviously, belongs to the latter group, because if she didn’t she certainly wouldn’t be writing about guns for The New Yorker Magazine.

Here’s how Lepore places the Bruen decision in the contemporary context: “Gun ownership is rising, and so is political violence. For nearly a century, beginning with the earliest public-opinion surveys, Americans have consistently supported safety measures and curbs on gun ownership. Since 2008, the Court has thwarted them.”

First of all, since 2008 the Supreme Court has heard exactly two 2nd-Amendment cases, one case was Caetano v. Massachusetts in 2016, where the Court ruled that a law covering ownership and use of stun guns had to follow the same rules which applied to the regulation of real guns.

In 2014, the Court heard another 2nd-Amendment case, Abramski v. United States, which upheld not only the entire licensing procedure codified by the 1994 Brady law, but also upheld the requirement covering the interstate shipment of handguns which has been on the books since 1938.

In 2015, the Court refused to hear a challenge to a 2013 law passed by the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, which gave town residents the choice of either getting rid of any personally owned assault rifle or keeping their guns and moving out of town.

If this is how the Supreme Court has ‘thwarted’ safety measures on gun ownership since 2008, then I don’t know whether I understand what the word ‘thwarted’ really means.

What is really bothering Professor Lepore, however, is not just how the Court is making it easier to own and wander around the neighborhood with guns, but that such largesse about 2nd-Amendment ‘rights’ also raises the issue of armed insurrection to new heights.

“Gun ownership is rising and so is political violence,” says Professor Lepore. In that regard, a study out of Princeton University found that: “the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 during the certification of the 2020 election looms large — as it should — in any analysis of political violence during this period.”

Fine and well except for one little thing. The only guns that were shot off on January 6th were guns shot off by the cops. So, the fact that gun ownership, according to Professor Lepore is rising (which it isn’t, by the way) and political violence is also increasingly common (maybe yes, maybe no) simply doesn’t mean that one type of violence has anything to do with the other type of violence.

But if you’re writing for the typical New Yorker reader — educated, liberal, unarmed — the last thing you’ll say about guns is that maybe, just maybe, a decision which allows Empire State residents to walk around with a gun in the same way that residents of 44 other states can walk around with a gun has little, if anything to do with why we suffer from more than 100,000 cases of intentional fatal and non-fatal gun injuries every year.

Like Jill Lepore, I also live in Massachusetts and I’m willing to come into Boston and discuss the gun issue with her any time she wants. I’m not holding my breath.