Guns And The Libertarian Democrat

Weigel also mentions in his column the fact that "Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is a loud-mouthed gun owner. Wayne La Pierre himself once flew to Montana to hand Schweitzer a National Rifle Association endorsement."

On the second amendment, a libertarian Democrat position would certainly hold that there is an individual right in the constitution to own a gun. However, it is also a perfectly reasonable position to hold that restrictions can be placed on that right, as long as the right is not restricted so much that it is no longer meaningful.

In this sense, a libertarian Democrat can sound very much like a moderate, being for the ownership of guns but with restrictions. But there is a difference between the two positions. A moderate may well believe that guns can and should be outlawed, but agree on a moderate position as a political compromise. A libertarian Democrat, on the other hand, will be against outlawing guns both for constitutional and libertarian reasons, no matter what he might believe about guns and gun ownership himself. The idea of personal liberty is key to understanding the libertarian Democrat position, while the moderate can certainly avoid any such commitment to personal liberty.

That is why the agenda of the libertarian Democrat is so important, because it introduces the notion of liberty into all policy debates, even those on the Democratic side. Such principled reasoning, even if not adhering completely to libertarian ideas, can be very important in framing the debate and implementing policy.

Consider the following two quotes from liberal writers:

"As I said before, I don't have very strong feelings on gun control, largely because I've not dug deeply enough into the evidence on efficacy. But insofar as the political conversation is around gun control and regulation rather than actual gun bans, this seems to leave a lot of room to maneuver."

Ezra Klein June 26, 2008

"I'd like to be able to thunder about the injustice committed by an activist, archconservative Supreme Court that seeks to return our jurisprudence to the 18th century. I will, almost certainly, about some future outrage. But this time, I can't.

The big problem, for me, is the clarity of the Second Amendment's guarantee of the "right of the people to keep and bear arms." The traditional argument in favor of gun control has been that this is a collective right, accorded to state militias. This has always struck me as a real stretch, if not a total dodge.

I've never been able to understand why the Founders would stick a collective right into the middle of the greatest charter of individual rights and freedoms ever written -- and give it such pride of place -- the No. 2 position, right behind such bedrock freedoms as speech and religion. Even Barack Obama, a longtime advocate of gun control -- but also a one-time professor of constitutional law -- has said he believes the amendment confers an individual right to gun ownership.

And even if the Second Amendment was meant to refer to state militias, where did the Founders intend for the militias' weapons to be stored? In the homes of the volunteers is my guess.

More broadly, I've always had trouble believing that a bunch of radicals who had just overthrown their British oppressors would tolerate any arrangement in which government had a monopoly on the instruments of deadly force. I don't mean to sound like some kind of backwoods survivalist, but I think the revolutionaries who founded this nation believed in guns."

Eugene Robinson June 27, 2008

This is a case where liberals are advancing a moderate position, and where libertarian thought, brought forward in a principled way in the Democratic party, could help frame and decide an issue in a more libertarian manner.

Of course, the libertarian Democrat might also disagree with the classic libertarian position advanced so well by Cato and Reason, but it is surely still a movement guided by the concerns of personal liberty.