Right Opens Fire on High Court's Gun Ruling

Last summer's Supreme Court decision that ruled citizens have an individual right to possess guns drew hosannas from the American right wing. But now the court's ruling is coming under attack—from conservative legal scholars. As the New York Times reports, two Reagan-appointed judges have called DC v. Heller the conservative version of Roe v. Wade, unjustly transferring a political question from the states into the courts.

For Richard Posner, an influential appeals court judge, the Heller decision "was the mistake that the Supreme Court made when it nationalized abortion rights." J Harvie Wilkinson, another appellate judge once considered for a Supreme Court seat, was even more scathing: he said Heller seemed like "a revenge of sorts for Roe, a sort of judicial tit-for-tat." (More Dick Anthony Heller stories.)