In District of Columbia v. Heller, Republican radical Antonin Scalia led the Supreme Court in a ruling for which there was no rational or historical legal basis (but boy, it sure was popular with gun-loving extremists):

Writing for the majority, Antonin Scalia argued that the operative clause of the amendment, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” codifies an individual right derived from English common law and codified in the English Bill of Rights (1689). The majority held that the Second Amendment’s preamble, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” is consistent with this interpretation when understood in light of the framers’ belief that the most effective way to destroy a citizens’ militia was to disarm the citizens.

The majority also found that United States v. Miller supported an individual-right rather than a collective-right view, contrary to the dominant 20th-century interpretation of that decision. (In Miller, the Supreme Court unanimously held that a federal law requiring the registration of sawed-off shotguns did not violate the Second Amendment because such weapons did not have a “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.”) Finally, the court held that, because the framers understood the right of self-defense to be “the central component” of the right to keep and bear arms, the Second Amendment implicitly protects the right “to use arms in defense of hearth and home.”

A big part of the problem is the mythology of a Supreme Court that stands for legal principle over politics -- something Court extremists have used to their advantage:

In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens asserted that the court’s decision “fails to identify any new evidence supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regulate civilian uses of weapons.” He criticized the court for attempting to “denigrate” the importance of the preamble by ignoring its disambiguation of the operative clause, and he asserted that it had misinterpreted Miller and neglected the subsequent decisions of “hundreds of judges,” all of whom had taken a collective-right view of the Second Amendment’s meaning. Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent.

I'm not going to bore you by pulling out more legal interpretations (although there are far too many). The fact remains that the extremist wing of the Republican party finds it more politically useful to hold the country hostage at gunpoint. (I suspect that people like Trump would be in prison right now if politicians weren't making the constant calculus of the rule of law vs. crazy people with guns.)

So of course politicians tiptoe around the issue. "Oh no, of course I believe in the Second Amendment, Mom, and apple pie!"

The last time I cautiously approached the subject, I was inundated with threats. (It's so much fun to tell your little old landlady to call the cops if she sees anyone suspicious hanging around.) And I didn't even write what they said I wrote! I did not call for gun owners to be rounded up and executed. (Duh.) But 2A bloggers and professional fear peddlers like a certain person who used to be an NRA spokesperson told her followers I actually threatened her children and all hell broke loose. Amazing, how the same liberals they call wimps are suddenly throwing all kinds of threats around, huh? You'd think common sense would kick in at some point, but no.

Look what happens with any Republican who criticizes Trump -- or even his policies!

Time for voters to stop pretending there is a solid legal basis for these anti-social gun laws. Just because the Supreme Court says something does not make it true.