What Clarence Thomas Gets Wrong About the Second Amendment
Never let it be said that Justice Clarence Thomas is overly concerned with appearances. Witness his release of a passionately pro-gun opinion, less than a week after a school shooting took 17 lives at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
As near as I can tell, only two subjects excite this most phlegmatic of justices: the death penalty and the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms.” I was present in Court two years ago when Thomas broke his 11-year silence on the bench—to ask Assistant U.S. Solicitor General Ilana Eisenstein why a misdemeanor conviction for domestic abuse should deprive the abuser of the right to possess firearms: “Can you think of another constitutional right that can be suspended based upon a misdemeanor violation of a state law?”
The quick-witted Eisenstein responded that Congress based the law on a record showing that “individuals who have previously … battered their spouses, pose up to a six-fold greater risk of killing, by a gun, their family member.”
But that answer didn’t satisfy Thomas. The following June, when the Court decided, 6 to 2, that Congress could outlaw
