Heller II?

The Cato Daily Report, run by Caleb Brown, who happens to have a very mellifluous voice, has an interesting discussion by Tom G. Palmer about a new case wending its way through the courts. It's about whether DC resident can do more than keep arms, but bear them as well.

The same attorney is handling the case who handled Heller, Alan Gura.

Mr. Palmer, as a gay man who apparently was engaged in a public display of affection with his boyfriend, was set upon by a pack of thugs who were trying to kill him. I think this happened in California. Running away, he eventually had to turn around and brandish the weapon he was carrying to thwart violence.

This is often how it goes down. Mr. Palmer, who has no doubt the threat of physical violence was real, says that thanks to that firearm he's lived for another twenty-eight years.

He was also one of the original plaintiffs for Heller.

Reading the historian Esther Forbes and her account of Paul Revere's ride, I learned that the colonials were forbidden from having large caches of weapons and gunpowder. Which they ignored. So our War for Independence could not have happened if we had not been violators of unreasonable gun laws.

This gives me solace. The last time I was in D.C., for example, I went a little overboard by packing...something full service. And doncha know I nearly had to pull it on a young thug who began physically confronting my friend and me from out of nowhere. He crashed into us as if we were bowling pins and he was the bowling ball. The hand was on it in its concealed position, when luckily the threat receded. But like any former Eagle Boy Scout I was prepared.

Just brandishing a gun at a criminal thug is usually all one need do to cause a prompt cessation of hostile activity directed at one.  It happens much more than people realize.

My friend, the very high-ranking gubmit lawyer who occasionally had after-lunch walks with former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, was momentarily freaked out. Needless to say, he's very hostile to the Second Amendment as properly understood, and thought I was insane for exercising my Second Amendment right. We're former West Point buddies and our bond is deep. But he did gratefully acknowledge he felt relieved I was as prepared as I was.