Article originally appeared on thefederalist.com.
Gun control advocates have become so dependent on emotional arguments they often seem incapable of offering rational ones. So, I was eager to read a new Bloomberg column (via The Washington Post) headlined, “The Second Amendment Allows a Ban on the AR-15.”
The piece doesn’t get off to a promising start, as author Noah Feldman props up a familiar straw man:
If we each have the right to bear arms, is there a constitutional right to a military-style semiautomatic rifle like an AR-15? What about a rocket-propelled grenade launcher? A small tank?
Notice how he jumps from the oxymoronic “military-style semiautomatic rifle” — not a real thing — to a small tank. Anyway, the proposition is that we should not have access to military-grade armaments. (Feldman is unaware that owning a small tank is legal.) But we’ll get back to that in a moment.
Throughout the piece, Feldman treats the Second Amendment as some kind of courtesy “extend[ed]” by the state, rather than an inalienable …
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