The Washington Free Beacon reporter Stephen Gutowski took issue Tuesday with a gun rights discussion on MSNBC's "Deadline White House," criticizing both host Nicolle Wallace and a gun control activist for getting their facts wrong.
In the segment, Wallace said the Second Amendment was intended to help fight against "foreign militias," not to create an "armed population."
"A conservative wrote a piece last week that got a lot of attention about maybe opening up the conversation about the Second Amendment," Wallace said, referring to The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens' op-ed. "His name is Bret Stephens, and he said the intellectually honest way to have this debate is to say that this isn't what was intended, that we're an armed population. This was a right to bear arms against foreign militias."
Gutowski, however, asserted Stephens did not claim the Second Amendment was not intended to mean America should be an armed population — or that it does not protect a right to arms.
Instead, "Stephens recognizes the right and argues the protection of it should be repealed," Gutowski countered.
Gutowski also pointed out the Second Amendment reads "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" — and makes no mention of "foreign militias."
He also refuted the response of John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, to Wallace's question, asserting he wrongly cited Justice William Rehnquist as the author of a 2008 ruling that confirmed the Second Amendment's protection of individual gun ownership.
The late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion for the high court in that case.
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