The international section of today's New York Times carries, under the headline "Senator Says Most Americans Want Controls on Light Arms," what amounts to an article-length press release from Senator Feinstein, a Democrat from California.
The article, datelined "United Nations," says Ms. Feinstein "challenged the frequently repeated assertions by American officials here that the Second Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed individuals the right to own guns. 'Mr. Bolton's position on the Second Amendment is in direct contradiction to decades of Supreme Court precedent,' she said. 'Not one single gun-control law has ever been overturned by the court on Second Amendment grounds.'"
Well, the Times doesn't bother to give John Bolton or any gun-rights advocates the chance to respond to Senator Feinstein. The Times doesn't even bother to give "Mr. Bolton's" first name or his title or what government agency he works for. (He's under secretary of state for arms control and international security.)
So it falls to Smartertimes.com to point out that Senator Feinstein is off base. In fact, NRA lawyers cite several Supreme Court decisions -- United States v. Cruikshank, Presser v. Illinois, Robertson v. Baldwin, Moore v. City of East Cleveland, United States v. Verdugo-Urquirdez -- confirming that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to own guns. That right is not unlimited, but it exists.
And as for the senator's claim that "Not one single gun-control law has ever been overturned by the court on Second Amendment grounds," check out the New York Times's own coverage from June 28, 1997. Under a headline reading, "Justices Limit Brady Gun Law as Intrusion on States' Rights," the Times reported that the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, struck down the background-check provision of the 1993 gun-control law. While it's true the majority decision was grounded in states' rights and not the Second Amendment, the Times reported at the time that "There were several separate concurring and dissenting opinions today. One of the more interesting was by Justice Thomas, who said that given the Second Amendment's reference to 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,' he doubted whether Congress had the power to regulate intrastate gun sales at all." Given that Justice Thomas was one of those votes in a five-vote majority overturning a gun-control law, Senator Feinstein's claim seems a stretch.
In today's otherwise pro-gun control article, the Times does manage to sneak in a puzzling line. "In her Senate speech on Monday, Ms. Feinstein questioned the Bush administration's position opposing international agreements on the grounds that they could constrain legal American arms sales, which are well-policed." This could just be sloppy writing, but it sure could be interpreted to say that the New York Times news department is now claiming that legal American arms sales are "well-policed." That would be surprising, given Times editorials like last year's one titled "The Scourge of Guns," which claimed, "We live in a nation awash in guns where more than 30,000 Americans die annually by gunfire, a toll that includes about 4,000 children and teenagers. Yet despite these horrible statistics, Americans are allowed, as in few other industrialized countries, to buy and keep an unlimited arsenal of firearms with very few restrictions and little government regulation." Some more attribution -- for instance, "which the Bush administration says are well-policed" -- would fix this problem.