Misfiring on all cylinders

University of Baltimore Law Professor Kenneth Lasson goes on a predictably leftist, completely unscholarly tirade about the 2nd Amendment in the Sun this morning. And after this complete reinterpretation of the concept of precedent, he drops this gem:

The justices should recognize that law professors are not always straight shooters.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Because Lasson drapes his warped views on the subject around nothing but his own background as a hack masquerading as a law professor

The main problem I have with Lasson’s arguments is the fact that he only gives one side of the story. He wishes to talk about the financial backing of the NRA without adequately exploring the financial backing of gun grabber groups like the Brady Campaign. What about Michael Bloomberg’s illegal campaign to fight firearms? Yeah, no mention of that.

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Nor did Lasson mention his work as an “Expert” for the Second Amendment Research Center. That outfit is supported by The Joyce Foundation, an outfit with a notorious anti-gun bias, and whose grant list includes grants to both the Bloombergers, Handgun-Free America, and the Violence Policy Center, which of course supports the outright ban on handgun ownership amongst other out there policies. Lasson’s cover-up of his affiliations (and the Sun letting him get away with it) is appalling.

Lasson also completely whiffs on the concept or precedence. Under Lasson’s worldview, the Supreme Court’s decision in 1939’s United States v. Miller is sacrosanct on the issue and cannot be challenged. Of course, there are a number of fallacies with the concept of precedence. Why should a decision be continued to upheld when it is wrong? Under Lasson’s warped logic that means that Brown vs. Board should never have been issued as it stood due to the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. And under the same logic, Tileston v. Ullman and Poe v. Ullman would have precluded the decision in 1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut…and that case paved the way for Roe v. Wade . I don’t hear Lasson arguing the concept of precedence in those cases because the decisions do not match with his leftist worldviews.

I am thankful only that Lasson’s concluding statement lets me know that Lasson himself realizes he is a hack and should not be taken seriously. My concern is that my taxpayer dollars pay for a a professor to be this intellectually dishonest…

To read something educational about the Second Amendment, check out the source list put out by überblogger, UCLA law professor (and good lord willing future Supreme Court Justice) Eugene Volokh.

(Crossposted)



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