Attorney General's office: 'decades of scholarly literature' support RKBA

Gun owners in St. Louis and elsewhere doubtless recall the rabid opposition among the District of Columbia's political class, to private gun ownership by American citizens.  From the outright handgun ban implemented in 1976, to the stubborn defense of that ban, ending with the Heller case, to the ultra-restrictive everything-short-of-an-outright-ban laws which replaced that ban, to the District's willingness to sacrifice its bid for "voting rights," because they would only come packaged with a repeal of those ultra-restrictive gun laws; D.C. has for decades restricted gun ownership to the absolute maximum degree it could get away with.

Meanwhile, D.C. is fighting tooth and nail against its obligation to reimburse Alan Gura, the attorney who won the Heller case.  From the Blog of Legal Times:

Lawyers for the District said in court papers that a reasonable fee for Gura and the team of plaintiffs’ attorneys, including Clark Neily III and Laura Possessky, is about $722,000.

That is less than a quarter of the $3.13 million requested by Gura, based on the 3,300 hours of work his team put into the case, with the judge who will rule on the amount calling the District's figure a "bargain basement" price, during the hearing last week.

While I believe that Gura and his team should be paid every penny they earned, and that the District should pay a high price for its insistence on trampling the Constitutionally protected, fundamental human right of individual D.C. residents to keep and bear arms, this article isn't really intended as an entry into a debate about legal fees.  Instead, let's take a look at how Samuel Kaplan, of the D.C. Attorney General's office, hopes to justify the low-ball figure:

Kaplan said Gura’s team did not build the case from scratch, relying instead on what he called decades of scholarly literature on the Second Amendment.

Oh, really?  Now we're told that "decades of scholarly literature on the Second Amendment" support the right of individuals to possess firearms?  That's certainly not what we have been hearing from that side.

I would love to hear Kaplan discuss that assertion with the Brady Campaign's Dennis "What People?" Henigan, who repeatedly accuses (here, for example) the Supreme Court of having, in the Heller decision, fabricated a "new right" of individuals to keep and bear arms.  Similarly, perhaps Mr. Kaplan would like to run that idea by Justice Stephen Breyer, who argues that the Founding Fathers did not intend for the Second Amendment to rule out gun bans.  It would be especially amusing to hear Kaplan discuss that contention with "Distinguished Professor" Robert J. Spitzer, who makes the . . . remarkable claim that the entire idea of the Second Amendment protecting individuals' right to keep and bear arms started with a law student's paper in 1960.

Kaplan, in fact, claims that winning the Supreme Court's acknowledgment, in Heller, that the Second Amendment disallows handgun bans, was not "complex."  That kinda sounds as if he's saying that it's a simple matter to understand that the Second Amendment guarantees individual citizens' right to keep and bear arms.

Well, Mr. Kaplan, on that, if on nothing else, we agree--if you get into an argument with Henigan, Breyer and Spitzer, I'll have your back.

See also:

• Robert J. Spitzer's views on Second Amendment are far from 'distinguished'
  
• Justice Breyer says Framers would support ‘gun control’
  
• Time For DC To Pay Up