Well, he thought about it

Richard Nixon Wanted A Handgun Ban

The headline is misleading and the first sentence is false.

What can you expect of a site devoted to politics?

The story begins,

Previously unreported tapes of Richard Nixon reveal the president once called for a ban on handguns.

It quotes him chatting about it with his aides and then says,

Publicly, Nixon never called for this measure[.]

Yes, and since there is no other way to call for one . . .

Anyway, I’m not sure what this is supposed to prove.

Lately, a number of pieces have appeared at conservative venues such as The American Conservative and The National Review panning Nixon for his liberalism.

Heck, Buckley and the rest of them panned him for it back in the day.

He was never a conservative and had no regard for their views.

In fact, when he first entered politics he billed himself as a liberal, using that very word.

In a departure from pretty reliable conservative orthodoxy, Reagan supported gun control because he was shot.

Anyway, Rebecca Leber of Think Progress is right about this, at least.

Even if Nixon’s handgun ban were part of our political conversation today, it would not survive contact with the Roberts Court. 

Five justices held in District of Columbia v. Heller that handguns enjoy special constitutional status and cannot be banned in the home.

In Heller, they told the truth, but the conservatives lied in McDonald and now neither the feds nor the states can ban handguns.

Liberals would have lied from the start and both the feds and the states could have banned them.

An honest court would have agreed with Heller but not McDonald, and only the feds would be crippled by that stupid 2^nd Amendment.

The states could do what they liked – consistent, once supposes, with their own constitutions, many of which have their own versions of the 2^nd.