Cop Killer

“Ban bill to target cop-killer handguns and rifles,” declares Michael P. Norton of State House News Service, just like he knows what he’s talking about.

Of course, the first line of the story admits that what’s being talked about is potential capability—no real cops killed with the pariah firearms can actually be produced. But the damage is done, and once more, the establishment propaganda machine manages to score a point with the uninformed under the guise of objective journalism.

But perhaps we’re taking the wrong tack on this. Perhaps we ought to up the ante.

Maybe we should insist they’re not cop-killer weapons, but soldier-killer weapons. After all, what they’re alleged to be capable of defeating is paramilitary equipment, as opposed to traditional police gear. It’s only when the police have become militarized that the special capabilities of these firearms are spotlighted.

Then we can invoke Justice James McReynolds’ rationale in US v Miller, when he observed: “In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.”

The corollary to this, of course, is, if a firearm can be shown to have such a reasonable relationship, the Second Amendment would guarantee the right to keep and bear such an instrument.

Yeah, I know. Keep dreamin'.