A Great Example Of An Oxymoron

The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (sic), formerly known as Legal Center Against Violence, issued a press release on Friday that is a great example of an oxymoron. The release concerned Judge Roger Benitez’s grant of a preliminary injunction in Rhode v. Becerra.

The head line of the release read:

Second Amendment Experts Denounce Court Ruling on California Ammunition Background Checks

When I think of the term “Second Amendment Experts”, I think of legal scholars like David Hardy, Dave Kopel, Stephen Halbrook, Glenn Reynolds, Joyce Lee Malcolm, and many others in the field. These attorneys and historians have studied the origins of the Second Amendment from English common law onwards. Dave Kopel is one of the editors of the first legal case law text on the Second Amendment.

Hannah Shearer, Litigation Director for Giffords Law, with all due respect, is NOT a Second Amendment expert. She is an ideologue determined to subvert the standard model of the Second Amendment as well as to promote gun control. She does have a couple of law journal articles and did appear in a panel discussion at Campbell Law School.

Those articles are the exception as her bio indicates:

She regularly provides information and commentary on the Second Amendment and state firearm laws to media outlets, and has been featured in the Los Angeles TimesUS News & World Report, and VICE News, among many other publications.

I have no doubt that Ms. Shearer is an intelligent person with her degrees from Yale and Stanford along with a circuit court clerkship. That said, to put her in the same scholarly class with David Hardy or Dave Kopel is an insult to Messrs. Hardy and Kopel. To call her a Second Amendment expert is an oxymoron.