Another perspective on Heller

In the midst of all the hoopla, I was reminded of a beautifully written essay by Garret Keizer that appeared two years ago in Harper's (which, unfortunately, doesn't make its archives available to the ragtag viewing public).

Keizer makes the progressive argument against gun control, and, coupled with the questionable efficacy of local gun bans, it's one that I find quite convincing. A choice excerpt:

As the living embodiment of progress itself, a progressive is beyond rage, beyond "the politics of yesterday," and certainly beyond anything as retro as a gun. More than I fear fundamentalists who wish to teach religious myths in place of evolution, I fear progressives who wish to teach evolution in place of political science. Or, rather, who forget a central principle of evolutionary thought: that no species completely outgrows its origins.

Like democracy, for example. What is that creature if not the offspring of literacy and ballistics? Once a peasant can shoot down a knight, the writing is on the wall, including the writing that says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident."

...

If the Second Amendment is a dispensable anachronism in the era of school shootings, might not the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments be dispensable anachronisms during a "war on terror"?