In the July 11 issue of The Tidings, columnist Douglas W. Kmiec, professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, wrote an essay critical of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision lifting the ban on possession of a handgun by anyone other than a trained law enforcement officer.

The column generated a number of letters critical of Professor Kmiec's column, in which he alluded to the shooting murder of his brother-in-law during an armed robbery. Among the responses was the following from Richard Nonn of Northridge:

"In the July 11 issue of The Tidings, it is Professor Douglas W. Kmiec who sets aside 'Constitutional text, history, and precedent' and not Justice Scalia and the majority in D.C. v. Heller.

"While his story of personal loss is tragic, might not the outcome have been reversed if good men such as his brother-in-law been armed and able to defend themselves? This was the intent of the Second Amendment as evidenced by the Federalist Papers, history and common understanding.

"The right to bear arms has always been just what the Second Amendment plainly states, along with the nine others in the Bill of Rights --- an individual right of the people."

Others wrote directly to Professor Kmiec. Following is one such letter, and the reply:

Sir,
I'm very sorry to hear of the murder of your brother-in-law. But did the guy who shot him use a registered, legal firearm? As even you must admit it seems vanishingly probable that he did. Scalia et al all were pretty obviously right in ruling as they did. It's just common sense.

Pistols and handguns have been historically and can still now, unfortunately, be necessary for self defense, in addition to which many people like them just for target practice, for historical reasons, or simply like them generally, as a hobby. I pray for the day that their only use will eventually be for marksmanship contests and the like. If we return to God's Law, hopefully, eventually, that'll be the case. But we're hardly there now.

I pray also that lawyers generally, who currently have far too much influence in society, will finally begin to respect God's Law, character, goodness, truth, beauty and all the rest of it, and that "judges" will finally be forced into line. Either judge according to God's Natural and Explicit Law, the Constitution and the body of law generally, or get out voluntarily or be booted off the bench. Legitimate differences of opinion can, will, certainly occur, even among God Fearing men, but the current ongoing travesty has to stop. We're utterly desperate for men of character on the bench. I think also that the higher ranking judges shouldn't be lawyers. Lawyers' egregious reputation is unfortunately entirely deserved, though there are a decided minority of good ones who take an awful beating at the hands of the others.

Again, I'm very sorry for your (both of you, you and your wife, your family, all of your) loss.

Signed,
Andrew Eppink

Professor Kmiec's reply:
Thank you for your many thoughtful observations on my essay on the Supreme Court's recent decision construing the Second Amendment to establish a right to possess guns for a wide number of as yet undefined purposes unrelated to service in a militia.

As for the use of guns for self-defense and hunting, this is a question left by the founders to the people in the several states. Thankfully, the interpretive mistake of the recent Heller opinion only applies to the District of Columbia. There is a slim possibility that it may not be enlarged, but the more likely result is that, like the finding of a federal abortion right which doesn't really exist except in the judicial mind, our Justices have now found a federal gun right of a general nature which will turn out to be binding on the states, when in fact, the Second Amendment had historically a very specific purpose: to sustain state and individual militias against federal limitation --- no more, no less.

The violent world of the 21st century is different from that of the 18th century, and our founders were smart enough to devise a Constitution by which their descendants in individual states and cities could take account of that level of violence and freely decide (as the people of D.C. had decided) to have more restrictive laws than those happier places where the guns are kept for venison and squirrel.

It is regrettable that the Justice who has so clearly in the past recognized the wrong of a judicially-created federal abortion right (which thereby limits protection of unborn life in the states) would write the very opinion potentially depriving the people in their states and cities of the right to democratically determine the level of gun restriction most suitable for their time and place.

With every gratitude for the kindness of your own thinking and your expression of sympathy for our Michael whose life and liberty and our love for him were lost, as in far too many other cases, at the point of a gun.

Caruso Family Chair & Professor of Constitutional Law Pepperdine University School of Law Malibu