IT'S NOT JUDICIAL ACTIVISM WHEN OUR SIDE MAKES STUFF UP:

A quick quiz: In what century did the Supreme Court first rule that people have an individual right to own guns? The answer is the 21st century. It was not until 2008 -- the year Barack Obama was elected president -- that the Court initially ruled that the Constitution imposes serious barriers to gun control. And it did so only by a narrow 5-4 margin.

To understand the magnitude of that change, go back to 1991, when Chief Justice Warren Burger agreed to an interview on national television. Burger was a strong conservative, admired on the right, and specifically chosen by President Richard Nixon to combat what he saw as the Supreme Court's left-wing activism.

Despite his conservative bona fides, Burger didn't believe the Constitution created an individual right to possess guns. On the contrary, he said the Second Amendment "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud -- I repeat the word 'fraud' -- on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime." In the next year, he proclaimed that "the Second Amendment doesn't guarantee the right to have firearms at all."

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