Progressive historians have used their position to justify unfettered government power for decades. Professor Saul Cornell has long taken the position the Second Amendment does not mean what it says. As an example of his rhetoric, he claims government policies encouraging gun ownership are proof of the legitimacy of government authority to ban guns. Laws and regulations encouraging people to exercise their right to arms are not a persuasive argument to show they had the authority to ban the exercise of the right. From Professor Saul Cornell:
Without government direction there would have been no body of Minutemen to muster on the town greens at Lexington and Concord. If the Founders had imbibed the strong gun rights ideology that drives today’s gun debate we would all be drinking tea and singing, “God save our gracious Queen.”
Professor Cornell conveniently ignores that the British Government’s attempt at disarming American colonists (including the militias) at Lexington and Concord directly led to the Revolutionary War and the forming of the United States.
Professor Cornell submitted his thoughts in an amicus brief to Judge Benitez in the Miller v Becerra case. Judge Benitez did his job and objectively considered what Professor Cornell wrote. He found many factual errors. Judge Benitez found that Professor Cornell claimed, at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment, Americans were:
“apprehensive about ‘the proliferation of especially dangerous weapons and the societal harms they caused’. In support he cites McDonald. McDonald says no such thing”
Benitez finds Professor Cornell’s claims regulating firearms and gunpower was at the very core of police power. Cornell cites three cases. The problem is they are about storing gunpowder safely as a fire hazard and say almost nothing about firearms. Professor Cornell cites a case about the potential to regulate a militia and discounts a case striking down a concealed carry law. Cornell routinely ignores cases that extol the American right to keep and bear arms. Judge Benitez closes his case on Professor Cornell with this statement:
The antebellum court decisions upon which professor Cornell rests, do not say what he contends they say. Perhaps he is to be forgiven because he is a historian rather than a member of the bar, but his opinions are not persuasive and are entitled to no weight.
Judge Benitez’s comments on Professor Cornell’s arguments can be found in the Miller v Becerra opinion, pages 58 – 62.
Professor Cornell has often been cited by those who desire unfettered government power and wish for a disarmed American population. In Miller v Becerra, where Professor Cornell has a chance to have a major impact, we see his arguments are based on mischaracterizations, bordering on, if not direct, falsehoods. They remind this correspondent of the Michael Bellesiles case. If one agrees with the Orwellian concept that political policy should drive the way history is viewed, a person could sympathize with professor Cornell. He has so little, verging on nothing, to work with to justify his preferred policies. It is easy to see why Judge Benitez reaches this conclusion:
his opinions are not persuasive and are entitled to no weight.
Second Amendment activists may wish to remember this evisceration of Professor Cornell’s arguments. These are the best arguments Professor Cornell has within the bounds of the Constitution.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
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