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Wednesday, July 02, 2008
So Wasted from Partying!
So anyway, I have to admit I'm still completely wasted from all the Heller parties I've been attending. Except for Sunday--the official day of rest around here--it's been like non-stop. There was the Crips party on Saturday, a block party in the projects, with everyone joining in except the old women cowering behind doors. Then there was the Latin Kings party on Monday, ending with a motorcycle race down FDR Drive. The Mexican Mafia had their own party on Tuesday, and even though no hablo espagnol, the tequilas kept me company. And last night, the Bloods Heller party, which was totally off the hook. I mean, you haven't really lived until you've seen O.G. Mike raising his glass of Courvoisier and getting choked up as he quotes lines from Scalia. He ended by toasting all of them, Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy: "Our homeys in robes: much love, much props, peace out." In the spirt of the occasion, they capped the night by busting a round of caps in an empty police car. (At least it was empty after the officers ran for cover.) And these were just the major shindigs. I mean, every gang, even the small, no-name, just-a-bunch-of-kids-with-drugs-and-guns gangs have been having Heller parties.
Anyway, it's funny how I used to be a federal prosecutor in the SDNY, prosecuting gangs as a matter of fact, and now I occasionally do lobbying work for them. It's even funnier how everybody's focusing on the NRA and other conservative groups funding Heller and now these other lawsuits in San Francisco and Chicago. It's like the media hasn't clued in to the fact that 4-6% of gang dues--it varies depending on the gang, of course--goes to supporting gun challenges. I mean, these are the guys--and ladies (I almost forgot the Latin Queens)--who have always read the 2nd Amendment as an individual right. Sure, they know if they're busted using guns to commit a crime, there might be consequences. But now, after Heller, who's to say that their tutelary protector, that little handgun they keep at home, isn't to lawfully protect property, kith and kin? For that matter, who's to say that if they're Terry stopped and frisked, that little handgun isn't for lawful self-defense? The guns just need to be registered, right? Props to Scalia, indeed.
Anyway, all of these gangs--normally enemies, which is why they need guns for self-preservation--are completely united behind all this 2nd Amendment litigation. They tell me I should file a couple of lawsuits on their behalf. But I just shrug and remind them I draw the line at lobbying.
Okay, that's it for this post. I gotta rest up for another Heller party tonight.
Posted by Bennett Capers on July 2, 2008 at 10:31 AM | Permalink
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Comments
A law prof going to a Heller party? It would have been funny if I could have suspended my disbelief. A law prof celebrating Kennedy v. Louisiana, now that I'd believe. Of course that isn't funny for other reasons.
Imagine a world where law profs and students weren't 180 degrees out of phase with the rest of society.
Posted by: sigh | Jul 2, 2008 2:22:25 PM
Um, I don't know if this is "pro-Heller" or "anti-Heller", but it sure is anti-funny.
Posted by: anon | Jul 2, 2008 2:57:49 PM
anon, if you can't get whether its anti-Heller or not, maybe it shouldn't be too terrible a blow to the author's self-esteem that you aren't amused. I will be thinking fondly of you whenever I read about living with Asperger's.
Posted by: Bart Motes | Jul 2, 2008 3:10:53 PM
This is fantastic post and very funny. Besides the gangs, somewhere Timothy McVeigh is smiling.
Posted by: Jason | Jul 2, 2008 3:14:14 PM
I bet you had a heller good time at all those peee-ar-tays!
Posted by: Jim Green | Jul 2, 2008 3:26:14 PM
Instead of writing lame, unfunny posts about Heller partying with gang members or your right to have "bear arms," why not read the actual opinion and then attack it on the merits?
Gang members will own guns no matter what the law or the Constitution says. Your reasoning reminds me of these dumb Republicans who say Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are rooting for Obama to win the presidency. Just because an undesirable group shares the same position as you does not somehow make that position a bad idea or invalid.
Posted by: Harry Lime | Jul 2, 2008 4:34:03 PM
I think the cities, as you observe, obliquely, will become the foci of limitations. It is reasonable the test case originated in DC, given social change there since urban sprawl, and the terror quotient of internationals' affecting the earlier ambience of Marienbad or Marseilles on the Potomac. I really liked JackBalkin's inviting Jack Rakove to bring some history to that website. From that I drew that guns were as much incident to living in founders' eras as symptomatic of endemic mouldering in our own times, though the political photogenicity of guns likely will keep them in the news, provided those street fairs and paeans remain within civil bounds.
Posted by: JohnLopresti | Jul 2, 2008 4:52:01 PM
Well, if gangs favor the opinion, then the opinion must be wrong of course. But consider this: what if Nazis agree with the dissent? I guess the opinion of the pedophiles would have to be the tie-braker as to its jurisprudential merit.
Posted by: Lawyer | Jul 2, 2008 5:19:30 PM
Not only does this comedy routine require a three-drink special, but its substance is outright creepy. So, if an opinion affirming a basic liberty benefits an unpopular group, the opinion is surely wrong? A few recent Scotus decisions undoubtedly give joy to terrorists, and a few others to convicted murderers, and yet we manage to avoid juvenile assertions that things celebrated by murderous thugs must be bad. File this under "If Mussolini wanted the trains run on time, making the trains run on time is bad."
Posted by: puzzled lawprof | Jul 2, 2008 5:52:04 PM
Wow.
It's tongue in cheek, people.
Get over yourselves.
Posted by: C. Zorn | Jul 3, 2008 12:52:18 AM
How do you know that it's tongue in cheek? It isn't obviously so from the text -- have you had private discussions with Professor Capers?
More importantly, why remove the sting of the post by labeling it tongue in cheek? I don't think it's at all inappropriate to point out -- mockingly -- that an undesirable constituency stands to benefit from the decision, whatever its "jurisprudential merit" may be.
Posted by: anon | Jul 3, 2008 7:59:46 AM
Now that was a bizarrely personal, substanceless rant if I've ever seen one. I like how he threw in the fact that he's a former prosecutor. Ya know, because that gives weight to his unreasoned opinions...
Posted by: anon | Jul 3, 2008 1:13:34 PM
It is good to have a liberal voice here, as the legal academy seems to have become overrun recently by gun toting conservatives. Glad to see you at prawfs!
Posted by: NYesq | Jul 4, 2008 1:57:06 PM
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