Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ no women.  I refer to the classic Hattie McDaniel line in Gone With The Wind.  Brown Jackson, during her confirmation hearing, infamously pretended to have no idea what a woman is, despite ostensibly being one.  Sadly, her congressional questioner didn’t ask her if she was a woman, and if so, for how long, which might have provoked an even more laughable answer.

Among the many topics I cover in use of force and firearm classes, is virtually all of those on the left writing about, legislating, and deciding cases relating to firearms, know little to nothing about them or any issue related to them. Our mummified meat puppet President, Joe Biden, during a 2020 Democrat candidate debate, infamously claimed 150 million American were killed by guns in the previous few years, which would comprise just under half the country. He also claims double barreled shotguns to be the best possible home-defense weapon, far easier to shoot than an AR-15. He has argued appropriate double barreled shotgun tactics include blindly shooting through closed doors, and stepping outside to fire warning shots straight up. He has also claimed the police should always shoot attacking, armed felons in the leg, and has argued armed citizens that saved lives by stopping church attackers should not have been armed.  

All such advice is either illegal, blatantly stupid, both, or would result in officers and innocents being injured or killed.

Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee tells us the AR-15, a specimen of which she claims to have handled, is absolutely horrifying. It’s heavier than “10 boxes” and fires a “.50 caliber” cartridge.  Other than being a rifle sufficiently light for 10-year-old girls to comfortably handle—about 6.5 pounds--and other than chambering a .22 caliber cartridge, she’s right.

Graphic: Supreme Court. Wikimedia Commons.org. Public Domain.

It's hardly a surprise that our newest Supreme Court Associate Justice would know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ no Second Amendment law:

...the Firearms Policy Coalition has been doing the good work of posting highlights to Twitter/X. [skip]

When it was time for the Biden Department of Justice to present its side to the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas asked what happens, according to the FPC, "with the trigger in a bump stocked rifle vs a full-auto rifle."

Graphic: Twitter (X) screenshot

Machineguns fire in the 600 round per minute range.  

Justice Jackson, with images of Chuck Norris killing an entire battalion of Vietnamese soldiers with a single magazine in "Missing in Action 2: The Beginning" still fresh in her mind must have thought, "600 rounds? I raise you 200 rounds to 800 — each and every second."

Graphic: Twitter (X) screenshot

Even modern, electrically driven Gatling guns don’t come close to that rate of fire.

I'm not singling out Justice Jackson for any special mocking here — just the regular amount. Jackson was speaking off the cuff, and everybody makes mistakes doing that. While it's extra unbecoming for a Justice of the Supreme Court to demonstrate such laughable ignorance about a case she's supposed to be hearing with her own ears, the government took its time to prepare its case — they wrote stuff down and everything — and still managed to come up with 600 rounds per second.

From the transcript:

And here's Justice Jackson: "And when, you know, 'function' is defined, it's really not about the operation of the thing. It's about what it can achieve, what it's being used for. So I see Congress as putting function in this. The function of this trigger is to cause this kind of damage, 800 rounds a second or whatever."

So, a gun’s “function” is not “the operation of the thing?” And “800 rounds a second or whatever?”

A gun’s employment, the specific task it’s designed to accomplish might not be synonymous with its function, but function and operation can certainly be. The point is Supreme Court Justices are interpreting law in light of the Constitution for all Americans. The Second Amendment is a fundamental, unalienable, express right. Shouldn’t they do sufficient research to understand the issues they’re deciding? Shouldn’t they know more than enough about bump stocks and their actual performance to not only avoid embarrassing themselves, but to ensure their decisions actually reflect the intentions of the Founders and the letter of the Constitution?

Of course they should, unless they don’t care to know such things, because they’re going to base their decisions not on the Constitution and not on the facts of the case at hand, but on political, utopian ideology. Perhaps to reach that utopia Joe Biden can buy Justice Brown Jackson a double barreled shotgun and they can shoot a few criminals in the leg—through closed doors.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.