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A Good Guy with a Gun

Long Shadow

Long Lead & PRX & The Trace & Campside Media

Narrative, 9-11, History, Terrorism, Anniversary, America

4.81.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

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Summary

Easy to handle and easy to conceal, handguns went boom in the 2008s, the same moment when many Americans — falsely and tragically — began to equate guns with safety.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

A note for listeners, on and across this season, there are repeated mentions of guns, gun violence, and their collective toll on our society and our psyche.

0:10.0

Please take care while you listen.

0:13.0

I think I may be the only attorney you've ever met where 100% of the cases I've ever litigated

0:20.2

have been victories in the Supreme Court.

0:22.2

Of course I don't tell anybody that the number of

0:25.2

cases I've litigated is only one. This is Robert Levy. That one case he litigated is

0:30.9

perhaps the most significant turning point in the history of the American

0:35.0

gun debate and the Second Amendment.

0:37.9

It's known as D.C. versus Heller.

0:40.8

The case started in 2002.

0:43.0

Washington, D.C. had a long-standing ban on handguns.

0:47.0

You couldn't have a handgun at all,

0:49.0

you could have a long gun, a rifle or a shotgun, but you haven't have it either, disassembled or trigger locked.

0:55.0

So unless she intended to club somebody over the head with it, it wasn't going to be useful

0:59.6

as it needs of self-defense.

1:01.8

Levy was invited to join the legal team planning a lawsuit against the district challenging

1:06.5

the handgun ban.

1:08.6

At first glance, he was perhaps an odd fit.

1:11.5

Levy doesn't consider himself a gun rights proponent. He says he's not

1:15.8

particularly interested in guns. I was animated by the violation of the Constitution

1:21.4

by Washington DC D.C.

1:23.8

At the time, Levy was a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute,

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