Question: What do the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union have in common? Answer: The determination to stop New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg from having his way with guns. The NRA defends the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. The ACLU defends the Fourth Amendment’s constraints on “stop- and-frisk.” Between the two, guns will remain on the street and more people will die.

The numbers are irrefutable. Last year, 419 New Yorkers were murdered, mostly by gunfire. In 1992, the figure was 1,995. That works out to approximately four fewer New Yorkers a day who were not killed by guns. Yes, crime has fallen across America, but nowhere has the drop approached New York City’s. Some of that is due to whiz-bang policing, computers and all that jazz. But some of it is due to stop-and-frisk. …

Still, the very same people who insist on an unforgiving interpretation of the Fourth Amendment and, more to my point, an unforgivably dense interpretation of racial statistics, wail when the same strict standard is applied to the Second Amendment. They use common sense to argue that the Founding Fathers could not have intended for every George Zimmerman to stalk the night, packing heat. There were 11,078 people killed by guns in 2010 and an additional 19,392 used guns to commit suicide. This is hardly the militia that the Founding Fathers intended.