LIPSTICK LIBERTARIANS. Professor Reynolds plays dumb, asks:

We're often told that Congressional efforts to repeal the D.C. gun ban are an affront to D.C. citizens' right to self-rule… But those efforts are in support of an explicit Constitutional right to keep and bear arms -- and since D.C. isn't a state, there's none of the usual argument about whether the Second Amendment should apply to its efforts or not.

So would a Congressional effort to overturn state bans on gay marriage in support of an unenumerated right to marry constitute a similar affront to local autonomy? I'm just, you know, asking. . .

This is the sort of lame sophistry you get from that particular sort of nerd who argues that, if you really believe in the Constitution, you will cede him the right to build a nuclear reactor in his mom's basement. One expects it of a student enjoying the now-traditional, youthful fling with libertarianism, but in a grown man it is just depressing.

(Of course, perhaps the Professor has outgrown it, but uses the language of lipstick libertarianism merely to plague pro-gay-marriage, anti-gun liberals on behalf of his current Party.)

The superficial similarity between the two cases -- gay marriage despite public will, gun emancipation despite public will -- does not withstand a form of logical analysis called common sense.

Briefly: two guys get a marriage license. This has the no power to affect their neighbors other than in fantasies. (Some feeble arguments attribute to gay marriage the power to destroy heterosexual marriage, but this magical thinking may be disregarded by sane people.)

Alternately, two guys get a cache of semiautomatic weapons. This has power well beyond the reach of fantasy. If this is only a "potential" threat, so is a jar full of smallpox.

Matrimony and weapons are categorically different. (No smart remarks, Mr. Bundy.) Society has a limited right -- one might say duty -- to regulate the presence of the latter in a community, to protect its citizens. (Hell, even lipstick libertarians and Tommy Hobbes acknowledge government's common-defense function.) It may be that the D.C. ban went over the line, but the remedy for that would be through the courts, followed by action from the appropriate legislative body (in D.C.'s case, the Council). The remedy is not a bunch of redneck Congressmen showin' the boys back home they's regular by afflicting D.C. with a utopian gun policy.