Here is my prediction, and I don't think it takes a crystal ball to make it: Every so-called “assault weapons” ban in America is headed for the constitutional trash heap. The Supreme Court has spent nearly two decades rebuilding Second Amendment law one major decision at a time. The message running through those cases is increasingly difficult to ignore: politicians cannot simply invent convenient legislative shortcuts around an enumerated constitutional right because technology changes, political fashions change, or somebody announces a new public-safety emergency. If politicians want to rewrite the Second Amendment, the Constitution already provides the machinery. Article V allows constitutional amendments to be proposed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states. Good luck with that. There is nowhere near the national consensus necessary to repeal the Second Amendment. So legislatures have instead tried to accomplish pieces of that objec...

In recent years, a particularly dangerous breed of idiot has discovered a new form of entertainment: weaponizing the police against complete strangers.  It is called swatting . The formula is breathtakingly simple. Some coward sitting safely behind a telephone or computer contacts law enforcement, pretends to be a terrified victim, neighbor, or eyewitness, and reports a fictional emergency. Hostages are being held. Someone has a gun. A family is about to be murdered. Pick whatever nightmare is most likely to produce an immediate and heavily armed police response. Congratulations. With a few lies, some fool has potentially turned somebody else’s home into a battlefield. Swatting gained notoriety through online gaming feuds, where spectacularly immature sore losers decided that losing a video game apparently justified sending armed police to the winner’s house. But the insanity did not remain confined to gamers. Swatting has become a weapon for revenge, harassment, intimidation, a...