Weak tea

Over at Ace's place, they're in love with Ted Cruz, Senator from Texas, and think that he embarrassed Dianne Feinstein during a judiciary committee hearing on her proposed gun control bill




I'd love to love Ted Cruz, but this was weak.

1) Feinstein and Leahy and Durbin are right - we absolutely do have speech that is not protected, because we've decided that the negative consequences outweigh the absolutist interpretation.

 2) The idea that the Constitution demands that we allow anyone who wants one an atomic weapon is the absolutist position on the second amendment. Do we really want to be defending that position? I don't. 

Obviously, an AR-15 is not a nuclear weapon. But the absolutist position on the second amendment would include it, just as the absolutist position on the first amendment would include child pornography and "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre." We don't countenance those things; we draw lines. The fight is, has to be, where do we draw the lines. The absolutist, "we don't draw lines" position is lost before it's stated.