Urgent -- Page Nine Correction Re: Caroline Kennedy

Possibly the greatest error in the history of Page Nine just occurred in the lead story on Caroline Kennedy. In relying on a usually reliable attorney -- whose anonymity is now saving his sorry butt -- I inaccurately conveyed an element of Ms. Kennedy's book, In Our Defense, The Bill of Rights in Action (Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy, 1991, William Morrow & Co.). The attorney, whose anonymity I intend to maintain, corrects himself:

"In accusing Caroline Kennedy of shoddy scholarship, I committed shoddy scholarship.

"The quote, 'the right to keep and bear handguns is not guaranteed by the Second Amendment,' does not appear in U.S. v. Miller, but (absurd as it is) it does appear in Quilici v. Morton Grove, which Kennedy was citing in her book. She was right, and I was wrong.

"Clearly, Kennedy is hostile to the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms, but she is not guilty of making up a quote, as I alleged.

"I apologize for my unforgivable error."

The book's discussion of the right to keep and bear arms rests on an examination of the 1982 Morton Grove gun ban, an act by a small town, supported by courts, that denied its citizens rights they had always had beforehand. That lower-court episode is considered by gun-rights advocates as one of the worst blots on the Second Amendment, but Kennedy and Alderman saw it as a proper stage to examine the issue. It would be hard to characterize their position as anything but hostile to the idea that mere citizens have the right to defend themselves with sidearms. The quotation the authors hinge their discussion upon -- inaccurately attributed in my report but accurately quoted -- is completely disparaging of a citizen's right to have or use handguns (and indeed, the Miller case makes no mention of handguns):

"Under the controlling authority of the only Supreme Court case to address the scope of the Second Amendment, U.S. v. Miller, the court concluded that 'the right to keep and bear handguns is not guaranteed by the Second Amendment.'"

The erroneous details were published online a few hours ago. I've made every effort to correct this as swiftly as possible. I apologize for letting that slip through, and it serves as proof once again that, despite the rumors, I'm only human.

Sincerely,
Alan Korwin

We need a barf emoticon.