ANDREW MCCARTHY ON OREGON AND OUR POST-CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC:

And while leftists don’t have much sense of humor about themselves, they fully understand the power of ridicule. When they hear a vigorous claim that, “You can’t take away my guns because the Constitution guarantees my right to them,” they are apt to snicker, “Yeah, because you just might have to shoot at the invading U.S. army when the government declares a police state, right?”

Few people are willing to answer that mocking question with, “Well, yes, that’s right.” People who frame government as the perilous threat rather than the admirable “public servant” are lampooned as nutters by the media and many of their fellow citizens.*

Whether they should or shouldn’t be is beside the point. What matters is that you cannot make a compelling constitutional claim about gun rights unless you believe in the Constitution’s rationale for those rights. By and large, the public lacks that conviction … and that is why our debate is about struggling to limit the Left’s antigun agenda rather than asserting our own gun rights.

Read the whole thing.

* At least a third of whom believe that government murdered 3000 people on 9/11.