Senator Barack Hussein Obama (IL), from Project Vote Smart:
a) Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.
b) Increase state restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms.
Former Senator Fred Dalton Thompson (TN), from ABC Radio Network:
If you care about Constitutional law, and everybody should, the big news is that it looks as if the Supreme Court is going to hear a Second Amendment case some time next year. The event that sparked this legal fuse was a case brought by six D.C. residents who simply wanted functional firearms in their homes for self-defense. In response, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the District’s 31-year-old gun ban — one of the strictest in the nation.
Our individual right to keep and bear arms, as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, may finally be confirmed by the high court; but this means that we’re going to see increasing pressure on the Supreme Court from anti-gun rights activists who want the Constitution reinterpreted to fit their prejudices.
From the enactment of the Bill of Rights in 1791 until the 20th Century, no one seriously argued that the Second Amendment dealt with anything but an individual right — along with all other nine original amendments. [Gun law expert Don Kates] writes that not one court or commentator denied it was a right of individual gun owners until the last century. Judges and commentators in the 18th and 19th century routinely described the Second Amendment as a right of individuals. And they expressly compared it to the other rights such as speech, religion, and jury trial.
Kates writes that, “Over 120 law review articles have addressed the Second Amendment since 1980. The overwhelming majority affirm that it guarantees a right of individual gun owners. That is why the individual right view is called the ’standard model’ view by supporters and opponents alike. With virtually no exceptions, the few articles to the contrary have been written by gun control advocates, mostly by people in the pay of the anti-gun lobby.”
Kates goes further, writing that “a very substantial proportion” of the articles supporting individual gun rights are by scholars who would have been happy to find evidence that guns could be banned. When guns were outlawed in D.C., crime and murder rates skyrocketed. Still, the sentiment exists and must be countered with facts. All of this highlights why it is so important to appoint judges who understand that their job is to interpret the law, as enacted by will of the people, rather than make it up as they go along.
It doesn’t take a paranoid to worry about gun bans when many leading politicians, news outlets, and other institutions have called for such bans.
 |
Columnist Charles Krauthammer once said, “In fact, the assault weapons ban will have no significant effect either on the crime rate or on personal security. Nonetheless, it is a good idea . . . . Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.” (’Disarm the Citizenry. But Not Yet’, Washington Post, Apr. 5, 1996)
Michael Gartner, then president of NBC News, said, “There is no reason for anyone in this country, anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun. I used to think handguns could be controlled by laws about registration, by laws requiring waiting periods for purchasers, by laws making sellers check out the past of buyers. I now think the only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns. And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution.” (’Glut of Guns: What Can We Do About Them?’, USA Today, Jan. 16, 1992) Liberal icon Rosie O’Donnell, on her talk show on April 19, 1999, said, “You are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun, I think you should go to prison.” Time Magazine columnist Roger Rosenblatt wrote, “My guess [is] . . . that the great majority of Americans are saying they favor gun control when they really mean gun banishment. . . . I think the country has long been ready to restrict the use of guns, except for hunting rifles and shotguns, and now I think we’re prepared to get rid of the damned things entirely — the handguns, the semis and the automatics.” (’Get Rid of the Damned Things’, Time, Aug. 9, 1999) |
semi-automatic, gun, Second Amendment
