Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound — look, up there in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman.
Joe Shuster, "Superman"

It's a wonderful thing to be the Attorney General of the United States. Just ask John Ashcroft. For one thing integrity is of no moment; power is everything. You ARE the law and the law is what you say it is. There is the Supreme Court of the United States but it is nothing more than a minor impediment to the ambitions of powerful men and John Ashcroft is nothing if not a powerful man. And by the time things get to the Supreme Court of the United States lots of time has passed during which the attorney general's opinion, rather than that of the court, is what matters. Consider guns.

John Ashcroft is one of the best friends guns have ever had as Attorney General. Notwithstanding their amazing strength, guns have from time to time found cause to fear for the very safety they give their owners. They surely trembled when they heard Mr. Ashcroft testify in February of 2001. They had long thought of him as one of their very best friends, but, perhaps more to the point, they remembered that their friends in the National Rifle Association had contributed $339,237 to his unsuccessful senatorial race, which he lost to a dead man. Money was not all the guns were mindful of.

They remembered that in 1999 Mr. Ashcroft lent his voice to radio ads in Missouri endorsing an NRA-sponsored referendum that would let Missourians apply to county sheriffs for permits to carry concealed guns and, if successful would have allowed the carrying of concealed handguns by convicted criminals, including child molesters and stalkers, throughout the state. They remembered that while in the United States Senate Mr. Ashcroft opposed the ban on assault weapons and new high-capacity magazines, bans that were supported by most national law enforcement organizations, calling the bans "wrong-headed." They recalled how he supported efforts to reduce the time allowed to conduct background checks of gun purchasers from three business days to 24 hours.

Recalling all those things, it was no wonder that they reacted with fear and trembling to what Mr. Ashcroft said to the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate during confirmation hearings on his nomination to the post of Attorney General. During questioning he said he would defend the constitutionality of gun controls he had opposed as a senator including a proposal to extend the racketeering laws to cover gun crimes. He also pledged to back the reauthorization in 2004 of an assault weapons ban he opposed while in the Senate. He said he would not impose his personal views on guns on government policy.

Hearing him testify, guns feared that one of their best friends had, in his quest for power, abandoned them and their cause and placed personal ambition above loyalty to friends. He had indeed placed personal ambition above loyalty, but the loyalty he abandoned was a loyalty to the truth. Guns needn't have feared. What he said to the Judiciary Committee was merely what he needed to say in order to get ahead. And it worked. He was confirmed as Attorney General of the United States.

In 2001, the NRA featured a picture of Mr. Ashcroft on the cover of its magazine and called him "a breath of fresh air to freedom-loving gun owners." In that same year Mr. Ashcroft sent a letter to the National Rifle Association, of which he is a lifelong member, in which he wrote: "Let me state unequivocally my view that the text and the original intent of the Second Amendment clearly protect the right of individuals to keep and bear firearms. While some have argued that the Second Amendment guarantees only a 'collective right' of the states to maintain militias, I believe the amendment's plain meaning and original intent prove otherwise." The fact that the United States Supreme Court in 1939 said the opposite had no effect on Mr. Ashcroft.

In October 2001, Mr. Ashcroft informed all U.S. attorneys that a federal appeals court in New Orleans had concluded that the U.S. Supreme Court was wrong in the Miller case and held instead that "the Second Amendment does protect individual rights." Delighted with that opinion, Mr. Ashcroft notified all federal prosecutors that the court's reasoning was correct and should be adopted by U.S. prosecutors even though inconsistent with the United States Supreme Court's Miller opinion and with the position taken by the Justice Department for more than 60 years.

Following his own advice, on May 6, Mr. Ashcroft's Justice Department filed briefs in two cases in which it argued that the Second Amendment "broadly protects the rights of individuals" to own firearms. Ted Olson, Solicitor General of the United States, observed in his brief that the position he was taking was flying in the face of the government's own briefs filed in the lower courts in which it said that the Second Amendment "protects only such acts of firearm possession as are reasonably related to the preservation or efficiency of the militia," a position consistent with the 1939 Supreme Court decision. Instead, said Mr. Olson, "the current position of the United States is that the Second Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals, including persons who are not members of any (state) militia or engaged in active military service or training, to possess and bear their own firearms."

Guns can breathe a big sigh of relief. So can their owners. The rest of us can only marvel at Mr. Ashcroft's moral agility. It serves him better than it does the country.

Christopher R. Brauchli is a Boulder, Colorado lawyer and writes a weekly column for the Knight Ridder news service.

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