When amoral, pseudo-intellectual reprobates are running the asylum....

I’m not a fan of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist but I’d agree that there are cases when “the law is an ass.” This seems particularly true when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is holding forth on a legal topic he’s just arrogant and self-important enough to believe he’s an authority on.

Spouting varying degrees of legal bullshit and concepts involves words he seems to have made up on the fly, Scalia (starting at 3:45 in the video) seems to be arguing that civilian ownership of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher (RPG) may be allowed by the 2nd Amendment. It’s a stunning leap in legal logic that he justifies by falling back on arcane legal concepts he references in order to buttress his legal knowledge, moral authority, ego, and outsized sense of self-importance.

I’m not a lawyer, nor am I a legal scholar, so I’m not about to try competing with Scalia on matters of the law. There comes a point, though, where simple human decency and respect for society must become the Prime Directive. I can’t conceive of a circumstance under which possession of an RPG or similar high-powered, highly destructive weapon could be morally justified. That a fringe Right-wing moral reprobate like Scalia could argue the 2nd Amendment might allow for the possession of an RPG frays the bounds of reason and decency. What “well-regulated militia” would allow for civilian ownership of an RPG as “being necessary to the security of a free State?” How could any society predicated on the rule of law hope to stave of anarchy when citizens carry open carry weapons whose sole purpose is to destroy property and kill humans?

If we’re to follow the thread of Scalia’s logic, it’s difficult to imagine where it might stop. If an RPG is legal under the 2nd Amendment, what about a 155mm howitzer? An A-10 Warthog? An F-15? If it seems I’m trying to stretch the limits of absurdity, it’s because Scalia seems to recognize no limits to the type and lethality of weaponry the 2nd Amendment allows an American citizen the right to own.

When I was working and traveling in Serbia during the war in the former Yugoslavia during the early ’90s, I’d occasionally drive by a farmhouse in the countryside with a tank parked in the front yard. Now I find myself wondering how long it will be before Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © in this country are doing the same thing?

Sometimes the law really is an ass. We deserve better.