Calculating the cost of freedom

OK, to be honest, I have no idea how to even begin to do that. Bob Leibowitz, though, provides us an estimate of how much it costs to fight against freedom.

But, not to worry. To prepare its case, the District hired seven outside attorneys, some of the top guns—no pun there!—from two of the area’s most prestigious and expensive firms, to help write and now perhaps argue its case.

The brief, 58 pages in chief with 162 separate citations, likely cost DC taxpayers at least $500,000, perhaps twice that, for research and writing. The result bears the hallmarks of authorship by a brilliant committee of highly skilled, charged and ego-endowed lawyers. It is a writing of which only a lawyer—no, only a conclave of lawyers paid by the word or the hour—could be proud. Each point is made with pinpoint precision in a well-organized pyramid of arguments, crafted and printed only after hours, days and weeks of research, collaboration, argument and honing by memo.

I'm trying, and failing miserably, to wrap my head around the idea of being a D.C. resident, living in a state of mandated defenselessness--and paying vast sums of money to help sustain that evil mandate.

Getting back to the original question-I still don't know the answer--although Robert Levy might (but he's not telling).

“We didn’t want this case pictured as another case sponsored by the usual suspects, which is to say the gun community,” Mr. Levy said. “Basically we wanted this to be a grass-roots public interest case, so I decided to fund it.”

He would not say how much he had spent.

“If you were paying market rates for a case that has been around almost five years, you’d be getting up to half a million bucks,” he said. “I haven’t spent anything near that. Not even in the ballpark.”

Quite a lot less than D.C. residents are being charged for the suppression of their freedom, clearly--and the bill for the pro-freedom effort isn't going to the taxpayers.