This commentator seems to live in an alternate reality when it comes to the Second Amendment.

The frightening thing, to me, is his job description:

Dick Meyer, a veteran political and investigative producer for CBS News, is Editorial Director of CBSNews.com based in Washington.

Nope, no bias there...

What a moron. Anyone who has actually read Miller cannot honestly say it backs the collective rights view. It only held that a sawed-off shotgun is not a militia weapon, despite the fact that such weapons were used in the trenches in WWI. In fact, if I recall correctly, Miller's side was not even presented before the court to give such testimony. The court also devoted several pages of the decision citing case law supporting the individual right.

Ah, the Media Elite in action. Bob Lichter wrote the definitive work on this in the early 90s. They're still going, despite Fox News, blogs etc. It will be interesting to see quite how long this ancien regime staggers on...

Much as I disagree strongly with Mr. Meyer's opinion on the subject, I think he deserves some credit for respecting the Second Amendment as a sufficiently relevant obstacle to his favored "gun control" policies that it warrants repeal. The Attorney General's recent guidance on the Second Amendment will have done a great service to the "gun control" debate, even absent a Supreme Court opinion, if it causes "gun control" supporters like Mr. Meyer to take the Second Amendment seriously, rather than relying upon the flimsy lower court precedent assembled to support the "collective rights" interpretation.

Mr. Meyer's call for repeal, while somewhat facetious, is at least intellectually honest.

As for Professor Volokh's suggestion in Friday's OpinionJournal (see "A Right To Bear (Unregistered) Arms", below) that a strong Second Amendment jurisprudence would increase the likelihood of political support for "reasonable gun control" laws like registration, I have to ask, what's the point of gun registration?

Cars are registered primarily for taxation purposes, to support public road infrastructure, which provides a benefit to car owners. If there is to be gun registration, what's the benefit to gun owners? Are we going to be taxed to support construction of public shooting ranges, or have programs to provide concealed-carry permittees with taxpayer funded ammunition for their public service?

If registration is solely for identifying guns which are stolen, private insurance companies can take care of recording the serial numbers, and they can be provided to authorities as part of a police report on the theft. That way, if the weapon is found, the person who received the stolen property can be charged accordingly.

As has been pointed out earlier, if the goal of registration is solving crimes committed with guns where a gun is left at the scene, then that's a very poor excuse for requiring all guns be registered. Particularly since convicted felons, who are prohibited by law from having guns, are exempt under a certain ridiculous precedent from being prosecuted for failure to register guns that they may acquire, due to the constitutional protection against self-incrimination.

It seems to me that there have been attempts before to require tax stamps for illegal drugs as a means of augmenting drug possession sentences, since druggies could be charged with evading the tax, in addition to their having the contraband. Why isn't this "self incrimination" precedent applicable to such a scheme? (I suppose I'll need to ask Drs. Reynolds or Volokh for the answer...)

for Mr. Barnes:

Haynes v. US is the "ridiculous" precedent you mean, but I don't view it as ridiculous (that's another discussion). I have questions into the good perfessers about it but I believe it still controls, so the whole registration section a few posts down could never apply to criminals anyway.

BTW, as soon as I say the name it sounded familiar - TPG is a great resource, and I thank you for the time you put into it!

Oops. That last line should have been "as soon as I saw the name"

A quick bit of web research provided the answer to my question about taxing illegal drugs. Here's the story from Kansas:

http://www.ksrevenue.org/abc/drugfaq.html

and an article about how it really works:

http://www.cjonline.com/stories/052901/kan_drugstamp.shtml

While one can be prosecuted for failure to pay the illegal drug tax, one cannot be prosecuted as a result of buying the stamps and complying with the law.

Similarly, one would suppose, felons in possession of unregistered guns should be exempt from gun possession prosecutions which could arise as a direct result of registration.

As with the drugs, it doesn't make their gun possession legal if they comply with registration, but such a policy would either encourage compliance with registration among the class of persons whom society most wants to see register their guns (unlikely!), or else provide prosecutors with an additional charge to add to an indictment for felons in possession, as the drug tax does for drug dealers.

I note also that the federal BATF 4473 form declarations are supposed to act in a similar manner, and if you are a felon and falsely declare on the BATF form that you're not, it's a federal crime. The Haynes decision, it would appear, makes prosecuting BATF form 4473 violations impossible (not that anybody's really been prosecuting them much anyway).

Help us out here, professors! :)