It's been a bad couple of weeks for Arkansans' right to self-defense. Last week, I lost a gun-rights case in the Arkansas Supreme by a vote of 4 to 3.

That case has been covered in this paper and needs no further elucidation. But you might have missed that two weeks ago, in another case, the right to bear arms also gave way to government encroachment as a result of an Arkansas Supreme Court decision involving the same 4-to-3 split among the justices.

The Arkansas Supreme Court has seven justices; two and a half are consistently pro-gun rights. Rhonda Wood and Cody Hiland are the stalwarts. Shawn Womack supports the right to self-defense, but he won't rule for it in cases involving the state. All three are conservative.

The decidedly anti-gun justices--irrespective of what the law requires--are the three liberals: Karen Baker, Courtney Hudson, and Dan Kemp. And Barbara Webb recently has demonstrated repeated antipathy towards clear gun rights.

Wood and Baker are in a runoff for chief justice right now. The election is in November. For a variety of reasons, including Wood's conservative respect for our inherent right to self-defense--as well as her ability to apply the law the way it is written rather than imposing her political preferences--I support her.

The recent Arkansas Supreme Court case I'm about to detail lays bare how justices respecting Arkansans' gun rights and the Constitution too often lose out to other court members who prioritize their political preferences. In this case, Justices Wood and Hiland followed the law, the anti-gun activists bastardized it, and........

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