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Manufactured cases

My former Cato Institute colleague Bob Levy is profiled by the Associated Press for his role in the challenge to the DC gun ban.

One great thing about Levy is that he tells it like it is.

As the article quotes: And Levy freely admits the case is manufactured, not one that bubbled up by chance from the district's steady flow of criminal cases involving guns. He wanted presentable plaintiffs to make a case for gun rights, not criminals.

"We didn't want crack heads and bank robbers to be poster boys for the Second Amendment," he said.

Is there a problem with this case being manufactured? I heard a talking head on the radio complaining a while ago that this case wasn't from real DC residents, that it was from outsiders.

What's wrong with that? There may be some times that it takes an outsider to challenge an injustice or bad law. Did DC residents claim that Martin Luther King Jr. was an outsider who should have minded his own business?

And about the case being "manufactured." After Rosa Parks died, Jared Taylor wrote a piece telling the "real" Rosa Parks story. I loved the response from Jane Galt: "I mean, are you out of your mind? She could have had a marching band behind her and a faithful band of followers calling out encouragement, and what she did would still be a monument to human courage in the face of discrimination."

Plessy v. Ferguson was a test case. Rosa Parks was chosen instead of a pregnant teen (Claudette Colvin). With Brown v. Board, the clients and test states were carefully chosen. They didn't want, to steal a line from Bob Levy, criminals as plaintiffs.

CJL

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