Paul Clement sticks to his guns

Pardon the pun, but it seems that SG Paul Clement has stood by the brief filed earlier which believed that the court shouldn’t use strict scrutiny on DC’s gun law.

One of the most important aspects of the 98-minute hearing was the steadfast commitment that the federal government’s lawyer, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, held to the position he had expressed in a brief that has come under heavy fire from the White House and from a wide swath of the gun-owning community. Clement had written that, while there should be an individual, private right to have a gun in one’s home, it should be subject to “reasonable regulation” by government.

From SCOTUS Blog

Update: From Countertop whose opinion I hold in high regard on these issues (plus he was there).

And for all the crying over Paul Clement’s brief, he did far more to overturn the machine gun ban (”we are concerned with plastic guns. Tough to oppose machine guns when they are primary arm of military”) than Gura who seemed willing to throw machine guns out with the bathwater.

8 Comments

  1. 1st – Solicitor General’s job is to defend acts of congress. Thats his client and to argue any other way would be unethical for him. That said, I think at the end of the day – especially if you listen to Gura’s crummy job where he agrees any ol’ reasonable regulation including bans on machine guns and sever restrictions on ownership – your gonna think Clement does a better job of defending our rights.

  2. I haven’t yet had a chance to listen through the arguments, but Countertop is someone whose opinion on legal wrangling that I trust, so I’m willing to withhold judgment.

  3. I wasn’t there, per se, but I listened to the streaming audio on cspan. The Sg defended RESTRICTIONS on MGs, not a ban. NFA ’34, not the Hughes Amendment; basically

  4. “we are concerned with plastic guns”

    So….plastic is a Material of Evil?

    He knows metal guns operate the same way, right?

  5. I didn’t say it was perfect, he talked about plastic guns that go through metal detectors; which don’t exist.

  6. Not only guns that go through metal detectors, guns whose DESIGNED PURPOSE was to do so; which will probably never exist

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