Michael Waldman > Quotes

“And there were men who worked as hard to restrict the vote as others did to expand it, such as John Randolph of Roanoke, who fought to deny the franchise to men without property, declaring, "I am an aristocrat. I love liberty. I hate equality.”
― Michael Waldman, The Fight to Vote

“Wayne LaPierre feverishly explained that all Americans must be armed. “After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia,” he wrote. “Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.” LaPierre’s version of the hurricane mystified those who lived through it. Coney Island was unusually peaceful: there were no murders, no rapes, and no shootings that week, according to the New York City Police Department.”
― Michael Waldman, The Second Amendment

“The most thoughtful progressive scholars recognized that the Court was responding to a broad shift in attitudes about gun rights. For one thing, elections matter. The presidents who appointed the five justices in the majority all were themselves NRA members.”
― Michael Waldman, The Second Amendment

“Repeatedly courts turned to the First Amendment. The right to speak is fundamental, but is limited or regulated under myriad circumstances. You are not entitled to commit libel, or to turn up a sound truck to eleven at three in the morning. As Justice Holmes wrote, you cannot falsely shout fire in a crowded theater. The First Amendment does not enable you to stage a parade without a permit: government cannot ban your political speech, but can set rules on “time, place and manner.” Courts treat campaign contributions to lawmakers as a form of speech, but have upheld limits on the size of the gift in an effort to ward off corruption.”
― Michael Waldman, The Second Amendment

“through the transcript. Some colleagues, at least, found the whole exercise droll. Fisher Ames, a Federalist”
― Michael Waldman, The Second Amendment

“The two factions long struggled for control. (Some patterns start early: Barack Obama was not the first urban politician to complain that rural Pennsylvanians “cling to guns or religion.”)”
― Michael Waldman, The Second Amendment

“the country made itself stronger, more egalitarian, more effective in the world precisely during the mid-twentieth-century period when jurists were most willing to seek meaning in the spirit but not the letter of the Constitution.”
― Michael Waldman, The Second Amendment

“Although there is little difference in the overall crime rates between the United States and other high income countries, the homicide rate in the U.S. is seven times higher than the combined homicide rate of 22 other high-income countries.”
― Michael Waldman, The Second Amendment