How Media Gets It Wrong About
Recent Second Amendment Rulings

ANALYSIS – In the 24 hours following the Supreme Court's ruling in Wolford v. Lopez—striking down Hawaii's unconstitutional ban on licensed concealed carry on private property open to the public—many media reports incorrectly declared the 6-3 decision to be a "new expansion of the Second Amendment."

That's how a headline at Slate described the high court's ruling in an article written by Mark Joseph Stern, and it was not complimentary of the decision.

Reuters joined the misrepresentation, noting in its lead paragraph, that the Court's two pro-Second Amendment rulings in June—the other being United States v. Hemani, the case which declared the government's prosecution of a man convicted of casual marijuana use while owning a firearm "is inconsistent with the Second Amendment"—had "further expanded the Constitution's Second Amendment right 'to keep and bear arms.'"

But, according to one of the nation's leading gun rights advocates—Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms—the media have it all wrong. He said so recently in a widely-circulated reaction to the Wolford ruling.

"The Court isn't expanding gun rights," he maintained, "it is fully restoring rights which decades of unconstitutional gun control have eroded." …