He appeared on Fox News Sunday to promote his new book. A description of the interview is available here. I’ll give Breyer props for pulling a pocket Constitution out of his breast pocket. But sometimes SGB really ticks me off.
Breyer asks Wallace:
“Are you a sportsman? Do you like to shoot pistols at targets? Well, get on the subway and go to Maryland. There is no problem, I don’t think, for anyone who really wants to have a gun.”
Shudder. Breyer actually had the chutzpah to cite the WMATA metro map in Heller to show how a DC resident could travel to Maryland or Virginia to use a gun.
This man’s hubris makes my blood boil. I won’t bother linking to my myriad replies to Breyer’s opinions in McDonald or Heller, suffice to say his total lack of knowledge about the nature of guns is immense. Self defense does not work when your gun is in another state. Gah. If you want to go shooting and you are a DC resident, go to Virginia.
Justice Breyer, who dissented in Heller and McDonald, is still adamant that he was correct and the dissenters were wrong. Breyer had this to say about the Second Amendment:
Madison “was worried about opponents who would think Congress would call up state militias and nationalize them. ‘That can’t happen,’ said Madison,” said Breyer, adding that historians characterize Madison’s priority as, “I’ve got to get this document ratified.”
Therefore, Madison included the Second Amendment to appease the states, Breyer said.
“If you’re interested in history, and in this one history was important, then I think you do have to pay attention to the story,” Breyer said. “If that was his motive historically, the dissenters were right. And I think more of the historians were with us.”
Breyer, who is loathe to rely on historians, somehow sees fit to rely historians that agree with him. Total confirmation bias.
Breyer asks “What is the scope of the right to keep and bear arms? Machine guns? Torpedos? Handguns.”
Breyer also noted that he will go to the State of the Union again this year. He’ll have plenty of leg room because he will probably be alone.
Sales must be slow if he’s promoting his book of Fox News.