As one anonymous writer put it in response to a recent column of mine: “An Armed Person Is A Citizen; An Unarmed Person Is A Subject.” To this I would say, sir, there are no subject-wimps or agents of the king participating in this dialogue. But I would add that empowerment is a function of inner calmness and courage; those who feel they must be armed to be empowered are not empowered.
And here we get at the essence of the clog. America’s gun subculture affects to be participating in the dialogue, but is in fact merely advancing an agenda. For instance, one of the lurid, attention-grabbing signs that pro-gun demonstrators waved last week on the steps of the Supreme Court declared: “More guns equals less crime.”
This is not a serious comment on crime or violence, but it’s a hell of a distraction — on the order of the “vigil” held by gun-rights advocates outside Columbine High School shortly after the massacre there, while President Clinton was inside meeting with students. According to news reports at the time, they held up bright yellow signs reading “Gun Control Kills Kids” and “We Will Never Give Up Our Guns,” seemingly oblivious to the deep inappropriateness of such a political intrusion on the process of mourning and healing.
The message they in fact communicated, and which the country has taken to heart, is that they have no shame. They will stop at nothing, will manipulate any tragedy, in their defense of the right to bear arms, and any difficulties and complexities caused by such a right are not open to discussion.
We have long agreed: the "gun rights" movement is not about facts or public or personal safety, it's about an extreme state of mind.
Long ago, we recall reading a conservative columnist who thought that the NRA was delusional in its emotional and irrational attachment to guns. But he felt that firearms provided such a psychological need to the most impassioned gun fanatics that he feared efforts at gun control might put them over the edge.
Koehler observes that "The 'debate' over gun control really has only one side, those who are against it. Their passionate faith in guns to protect them is not matched by opponents who just as passionately despise guns and want them all confiscated. Our passion is for an end to violence and the building of a culture of trust, part of which includes sensible and workable gun laws. It includes much more than this as well."
It includes advocates for a broadened sense of social and community responsibility becoming as passionate as "gun rights" proponents. Because only then will the political decisions of a partisan Supreme Court be trumped by a movement for public safety and the common good.
We haven't talked about gun suicides in awhile, but Mother Jones magazine brings up the issue in relation to the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding handgun "ownership" as an "individual right."
Alas, the number of people killed in "self-defense" with a gun is dwarfed by the number of people who commit suicide with a firearm. It's worthy of note that the issue of "self-defense" with a gun is not even in the Constitution.
Suicide is always an uncomfortable issue for Americans to discuss. Many in our nation believe that suicide is a "personal choice" issue and cannot be prevented. In the majority of suicides -- particularly among young people -- nothing could be further from the truth. Circumstance, including easy access to guns, plays a significant role in youth and other suicides.
Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There was nothing unique about that year — gun-related suicides have outnumbered firearm homicides and accidents for 20 of the last 25 years. In 2005, homicides accounted for 40 percent of gun deaths. Accidents accounted for 3 percent. The remaining 2 percent included legal killings, such as when police do the shooting, and cases that involve undetermined intent.
Public-health researchers have concluded that in homes where guns are present, the likelihood that someone in the home will die from suicide or homicide is much greater.
Those are some shocking statistics that make the recent Supreme Court ruling even more startling.
Antonin Scalia and the four justices who supported him in reinterpreting the Second Amendment against longstanding Supreme Court precedent are, in essence, asserting judicial activism. It was a political decision, not a legal one.
Meanwhile, more families are likely to now lose a loved one to a suicide than to be "protected" by a firearm kept in the home for self-defense.
The gun lobby's smear machine is gearing up for a major assault on Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
The NRA stated it would spend approximately $40 million on this year's fall elections "with $15 million of that devoted to portraying Barack Obama as a threat to the Second Amendment rights upheld last week by the Supreme Court," according to Politico on July 1st.
How many times do we have to say it, you cannot negotiate with the gun zealots of the NRA.
The current American political playbook almost dictates that candidates state their "support for the Second Amendment." Once a candidate does so, he or she is immediately in a defensive position to the gun lobby.
To counter this the candidate must define and reframe the gun issue to talk about the need to enforce the law on gun traffickers; make the connection between our lax gun laws and the threat of terrorism; make the common sense case to close loopholes so that every gun owner must pass a sensible background check; create clear distinctions between military-style assault weapons and .50 caliber sniper rifles and hunting rifles; emphasize the costs of gun violence and highlight the pain and suffering of victims and survivors and the urgency to get our gun violence epidemic under control. Finally, the candidate must embrace and build upon alliances with grassroots advocates, law enforcement, public health, social justice, business and interfaith leaders.
Perhaps most importantly, a candidate must use "fighting the gun lobby" as an advantage to highlight the candidate's strength, authenticity and independence to appeal to suburban voters and families to build robust and inclusive coalitions.
With just a little bit of tenacity and smarts, virtually any candidate could turn the tables on the gun lobby and redefine the gun issue and put the gun lobby on the defensive. There is no shortage of arguments to use against them.
This is no easy task to be sure. At heart, a candidate must be confident, demonstrate leadership, and be willing to take the onslaught from the gun lobby who spare no shortage of the worst and negative tactics against anyone who challenges their position.
Our advice extends to any and all candidates who believe in standing up to the gun lobby's hijacking of our country. Specifically, Senator John McCain could reclaim his status as a "maverick" if he were to "sincerely" adopt a platform of taking on the gun lobby.
But the NRA clearly has it out, again, for the democratic nominee. Proof that the gun lobby is significantly an extension of the Republican Party, the NRA is looking past Sen. John McCain's support for closing the gun show loophole. McCain actually sponsored the federal legislation.
The NRA even put McCain on its magazine cover, First Freedom, threatening McCain for supporting his federal gun show loophole bill.
“Our members understand that if Barack Obama is elected president, and he has support in the Senate to confirm anti-gun Supreme Court nominees, [the District of Columbia v. Heller decision] could be taken away from us in the future,” Chris Cox, head of the NRA’s political arm, told Politico.
The politically powerful gun rights group will split its message efforts between communicating with its 4 million members and the tens of millions more firearms owners across the country.
This fall, NRA members will get automated phone calls, mail pieces and pre-election editions of the group’s three magazines making the case against Obama. More broadly, the group will use an independent expenditure effort to hammer the Democratic nominee via TV, radio and newspaper ads in some of about 15 battleground states in the Midwest and Mountain West.
“We look forward to showing him ‘bitter,’” Cox said, referring to Obama’s statement this spring that some in rural America “cling” to guns and religion out of bitterness.
Since 2000, Democrats have made a conscious decision to avoid alienating gun owners and Second Amendment enthusiasts, as many in the party believe a NRA-stoked backlash cost Al Gore his home state of Tennessee , as well as West Virginia and Arkansas, in the 2000 presidential election. In the days leading up to Election Day four years ago, Democratic nominee Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) even went so far as to symbolically court gun owners, donning camouflage and hoisting a 12-gauge in what turned out to be a goose hunt in more ways than one.
And Obama is now charting a similar course, never raising the gun issue on the stump except, when asked, to say that he respects Second Amendment rights. Indeed, the day Heller came down, he issued a carefully worded statement that indicated neither support nor opposition to the decision but clarity on a broader point meant to assure gun owners that he’s not a threat. McCain voiced enthusiastic support for the Heller decision.
“Sen. Obama has always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms and will uphold the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners, hunters and sportsmen as president,” said spokesman Tommy Vietor. “Sen. Obama also believes that we can work together to enact common-sense laws, like closing the gun show loophole and improving our background check system, so that guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals.”
The difficulty for Sen. Obama is that he lives in Chicago with its own handgun ban, now under attack from the gun lobby.
The NRA filed suit on Friday to overturn handgun laws in Chicago, Obama’s hometown, and three Windy City suburbs
“You put a microphone to his face and ask: ‘Do you support the Chicago gun control laws?’” said Grover Norquist, an NRA board member, envisioning how to prolong the story and make the Illinois senator squirm.
It’s a quandary that the NRA and the McCain campaign hope will haunt Obama in battleground states with a deep attachment to the hunting culture that crosses party lines.
American elections are, truth be told, decided by winning key states.
While the gun culture is typically associated with the South, it’s actually the industrial Midwest where hunting is most popular.
Pennsylvania has the most NRA members per capita of any state, and, after Texas, the next four states that sell the most hunting-related goods are Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Missouri, according to the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.
And while Bill Clinton, Gore and Kerry could all handle a gun and had been hunting many times over the years, Obama has never hunted in his life and is the furthest thing from an outdoorsman.
Yet, as with so many issues on which Obama is vulnerable, McCain isn’t exactly a perfect alternative.
Aside from not being a hunter, he earned the enmity of some in the gun rights movement for his advocacy of campaign finance reform and background checks at gun shows.
“I don’t think they help the Republican Party at all, but I don’t think they should in any way play a major role in the Republican Party’s policy making,” McCain told CNN in 2000.
The absurdity – let alone the sham legal “arguments” offered by Justice Scalia and his conservative leaning colleagues – of claiming that the Second Amendment applies to an "individual right" to own guns is going to wreak havoc around the nation.
Take the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport, where guns are banned throughout the complex. A pro-NRA legislator decided that it was unfair for "real men" not to be allowed to carry concealed handguns at an airport gift shop. In response, the lawmaker got a bill passed in Georgia allowing guns to be carried in the airport outside the secure areas.
The new state law, which Bearden [the NRA point man] sponsored, permits licensed gun owners to carry concealed firearms in parks, on public transportation and in restaurants that serve liquor.
Firearms proponents hailed the law as a victory for the Second Amendment. They say law-abiding citizens with the appropriate permits should be allowed to carry firearms in formerly forbidden areas for self-protection.
Before the new law was passed, Georgia law banned guns from venues like public transportation and restaurants serving alcohol.
Where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a person has a right to carry a handgun while he is getting liquored up in a restaurant? People lived in small towns, for the most part, in Colonial times, where they knew their neighbors and the concept of an intruder was rare at best.
How we got from arming militias against an overbearing King George to downing beer and chasers while carrying a loaded handgun is one of the most bizarre and dangerous twists and turns in American culture.
As for the Atlanta Airport Authority, they are ready to fight for keeping their airport – now the busiest in the nation – from guys who think that they need guns to be safe at a Hartsfield ticket counter:
"We're going to make it clear that the law does not make any allowance for guns at the airport," DeCosta [the head of the airport] had said Monday. "Guns are not appropriate for any airport in Georgia."...
DeCosta said city officials will not back down from their position on the new law and again vowed to have Bearden or anyone else carrying a gun on airport property arrested.
"He can then have all the NRA [National Rifle Association] lawyers say why it's OK for him to bring a gun to the airport," DeCosta said.
It’s nice to know that some public officials have the guts to stand up to intimidation and flights of fantasy when it comes to guns.
Can anyone in their right mind imagine that the Atlanta Airport would be safer with gun toters on the prowl?
GunGuys is non-partisan, but everyone -- including the NRA -- will admit that the current administration of George W. Bush has given them just about everything on their wish list, so they have run out of raw meat to toss to their membership.
As a result, they have come up with ideas so loathsome to family safety that even rural supporters are deserting them. We've talked, for instance, about the gun lobby's lack of respect for the tranquility of our environment and wilderness areas. They are now pushing for allowing hidden and loaded guns to be carried in our pristine National Parks. But did you know that would also include the major monuments in D.C., which fall under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service?
This is like letting the lunatics run the asylum, giving the NRA everything on its demented legislative dance card.
In a recent e-mail, the executive director of The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility concurred with us:
First, the NRA convinced the Bush regime to allow open carrying of loaded firearms in National Parks in states that allow it. This change handcuffs rangers trying to stop poaching of park wildlife.
Then the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia's gun law, leaving the nation's capital temporarily with no firearm restrictions until the city government can enact replacements.
Without dwelling on the specter of people strolling across the National Mall with rifle in hand, the larger question is why the Bushies want to get rid of sensible rules that have been around for a century (the current version of the rule was written under Reagan). Six retired National Park Service directors, including one from Bush's first term, have condemned this plan.
I suppose we have reached the point in this administration where groups like the NRA are close to exhausting their wish lists. Fortunately, the Department of Interior ignored the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, so their gun plan will likely end up in court until after the inauguration when the next president will decide if he wants to inject a little more of the Wild West into our Capitol's front yard.
Jeff Ruch
Executive Director
In Washington, lawmakers cower before the NRA, despite the fact that polls show overwhelming opposition to the idea of guys carrying hidden and loaded handguns in Yellowstone Park or the Washington Monument for that matter.
But in D.C., perception is power -- and the NRA hands out a lot of campaign money to boot.
The NRA rarely wins at the polls -- despite their endless blustering. But they do know how to buy votes and intimidate their way to victory.
But to what end?
As we've said before on GunGuys, if a supposedly brave gun guy is so afraid of the alleged "dangerous people" in a National Park, then he doesn't have to go to one.
But leave the rest of us in peace, for crying out loud.
Last Thursday, the Supreme Court, headed by conservative justice Antonin Scalia who wrote the majority opinion, overturned the District of Columbia's handgun ban by asserting that the ban violated the Second Amendment. In doing so, Scalia reversed over 200 years of legal precedent and ignored the robust history of gun control since the founding of the country in order to justify the Court's new, dramatic, confusing and certainly misguided decision.
But something big got overlooked amidst the headlines.
The Supreme Court held that, in fact, gun control is Constitutional, and certainly viable. For example, even the conservative members of the Supreme Court, and Scalia himself, stated unequivocally that governments have the right and authority to regulate carrying concealed weapons, regulate gun sales, allow for the registration of guns, and even prohibit "dangerous and unusual weapons" -- which we read as an ability to ban to military-style assault weapons and powerful .50 caliber sniper rifles.
In short, the conservatives on the Supreme Court fully endorsed gun control as a concept and legal doctrine, and that no right is beyond sensible regulations.
Scalia wrote in his opinion:
“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited...[It is not a] right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. …[The Court’s] opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,” (p. 54-55).
By definition, the only way to screen "felons" and the "mentally ill" is to enact common sense measures such as universal background checks, waiting periods, licensing gun owners and other sensible provisions that do not, according to Justice Scalia, violate anyone's Second Amendment right.
What does this mean? It means that gun control advocates have very good reasons to feel optimistic. In fact, the conservatives on the Supreme Court may well have sucker-punched the gun lobby without even realizing it.
By asserting that there is an individual right to keep and bear arms -- which we hope one day gets reversed and put back in its proper reading of the Second Amendment -- and holding that gun control won't lead to a slippery slope of confiscating all guns, the Supreme Court completely eviscerated the NRA's two main pillars for its fundraising operations.
In other words, it is entirely possible that all of the wind has been taken out of the gun lobby's sails. What "fear card" can the gun lobby possibly play anymore?
For the short term, however, the gun lobby is feeling empowered, and already targeting Chicago's own handgun ban which Mayor Daley has sworn to fight for. Although it might be highly optimistic to think so, the gun issue "could" evolve from the divisive political debate into a new phase of problem solving and what to do about the approximately 30,000 gun deaths and tens of thousands of Americans wounded each year.
There is no question that the Supreme Court violated its own standards by ignoring longstanding precedent in stripping DC of its handgun ban. And legal experts have rightfully chastised Justice Scalia's legal doctrine of "originalism" as a sham in light of his parsing of words and ignoring his own theory that Courts should not create laws and invent new legal interpretations, which is exactly what Justice Scalia did.
It's clear that Justice Scalia is more of a conniving politician than a jurist or legal theorist, crafting an unfounded interpretation that there is an "individual right" to keep and bear arms in order to give the gun lobby the political victory it sought, but leaving just enough ambiguity to maintain at least a semblance of the Court's credibility.
But the missing headline in all of the spin is that gun control received its most unlikely endorsement, from all places, the Supreme Court and it's arch-conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia.
Gun violence prevention advocates are right to feel frustrated, angry, and even perplexed over the Supreme Court's misguided ruling.
But make no mistake about it, support for sensible gun violence prevention measures and stronger gun laws is alive and well in America.
And yes, according to Antonin Scalia, it can and will pass Constitutional muster too.
It is difficult sometimes to comprehend just how abysmal and deficient the American system of justice can be.
According to the Houston Chronicle's report on June 30th, Joe Horn, a man who gunned down two illegal immigrants in the back when he saw them breaking into his neighbor's home, and who was adamantly warned by a 9-1-1 operator to stay inside his home, was cleared by a Pasadena, Texas grand jury today of murder charges.
Joe Horn cleared by grand jury in Pasadena shootings
A Harris County grand jury decided today that Joe Horn should not be charged with a crime for shooting two suspected burglars he confronted outside his neighbor's home in Pasadena last fall.
The decision to clear Horn of wrongdoing came two weeks after the grand jury began considering evidence in the case, including Horn's testimony last week.
Horn, a 62-year-old retiree, became the focus of an intense public debate after the Nov. 14 shootings. Many supporters praised him as a hero for using deadly force to protect property, while others dismissed him as a killer who should have heeded a 911 operator's instructions to stay in his house and wait for police.
Horn called authorities after hearing breaking glass and seeing two men climb through a window into his next-door neighbor's home in the 7400 block of Timberline.
The 911 operator urged Horn to remain inside, but he went outside with his 12-gauge shotgun and came face-to-face with Diego Ortiz, 30, and Hernando Riascos Torres, 38.
According to a transcript of Horn's 911 call, which he made about 2 p.m., the operator repeatedly urged Horn to stay in his house, but Horn said he did not believe it would be right to let the burglars get away.
"Well, here it goes, buddy," Horn can be heard telling the operator. "You hear the shotgun clicking and I'm going."
The operator replies: "Don't go outside."
Then the tape records Horn warning someone: "Move and you're dead!" Two quick shots can be heard, followed by a pause and then a third shot.
Pasadena police Capt. A.H. "Bud" Corbett said a few weeks after the shooting that a plainclothes detective had parked in front of Horn's house in response to the 911 call. He said the detective saw the men between Horn's house and his neighbor's before they crossed into Horn's front yard.
It appeared that neither Horn nor the men knew a police officer was present, Corbett said.
"It was over within seconds. The detective never had time to say anything before the shots were fired," Corbett said. "At first, the officer was assessing the situation. Then he was worried Horn might mistake him for the 'wheel man' (getaway driver). He ducked at one point."
When Horn confronted the suspects in his yard, he raised his shotgun to his shoulder, Corbett said. However the men ignored his order to freeze.
Corbett said one man ran toward Horn, but had angled away from him toward the street when he was shot in the back just before reaching the curb.
"The detective confirmed that this suspect was actually closer to Horn after he initiated his run than at the time when first confronted," said Corbett. "Horn said he felt in jeopardy."
Ortiz and Torres died a short distance from Horn's house, both shot in the back.
This tragedy is a disturbing example of the intersection of America's gun culture, the abuse of "self-defense" as an excuse to commit murder, and our nation's appalling legacy of racism. Joe Horn felt it was his right and responsibility, as a gun owner, to play cop, judge and jury to decide the fate of two men's lives.
Yes, the two men were illegal immigrants. Yes, they had committed crimes, and indeed, were in the act of committing another. But who gave Joe Horn the power to play god over their lives? Who handed the keys of the rule of law over to Joe Horn to unilaterally decide their fate?
Joe Horn's shotgun, and his alleged "right" to own a firearm, gave him -- at least in his disturbed mind -- a license to murder.
And instead of acknowledging or even apologizing for his brutal and violent actions by shooting Diego Ortiz and Hernando Riascos Torres in the back, Joe Horn tried to claim that he acted in self-defense.
The Chronicle continues:
As the grand jury began hearing evidence in the case this month, Horn's attorney, Tom Lambright, said recently that Horn regrets his decision to confront the men.
"Was it a mistake from a legal standpoint? No. But a mistake in his life? Yes," Lambright said. "Because it's affected him terribly. And if he had it to do over again, he would stay inside.
"I don't think anybody can really appreciate the magnitude that something like this has on a person's personality."
Lambright said Horn didn't expect to be involved in a shooting, but rather expected to see the two men running or driving away.
"He thought he was gathering evidence for the police department," Lambright said.
The shooting brought hundreds of protesters to the Village Grove East subdivision where Horn lives with his daughter and her family. One protest included supporters of Houston activist Quanell X and motorcyclists countering his remarks. The protest which brought hundreds to the neighborhood led to the Pasadena City Council to approve a city ordinance banning protests in front of a residential home.
Aside from the shooting itself, the national debate revolved around the fact that Ortiz and Torres were illegal immigrants from Colombia. Torres had been sent to prison for dealing cocaine and was deported in 1999.
The day after the Supreme Court erased DC's handgun ban and invented a new interpretation of an "individual right" to keep and bear arms, the Chicago Tribune writes a blistering editorial calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment.
Repeal the 2nd Amendment
No, we don’t suppose that’s going to happen any time soon. But it should.
The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is evidence that, while the founding fathers were brilliant men, they could have used an editor.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
If the founders had limited themselves to the final 14 words, the amendment would have been an unambiguous declaration of the right to possess firearms. But they didn’t and it isn’t. The amendment was intended to protect the authority of the states to organize militias. The inartful wording has left the amendment open to public debate for more than 200 years. But in its last major decision on gun rights, in 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found that that was the correct interpretation.
On Tuesday, five members of the court edited the 2nd Amendment. In essence, they said: Scratch the preamble, only 14 words count. (Click here to read the full decision)
In doing so, they have curtailed the power of the legislatures and the city councils to protect their citizens.
The majority opinion in the 5-4 decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., ban on handgun possession goes to great lengths to parse the words of the 2nd Amendment. The opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, spends 11 1/2 pages just on the meaning of the words "keep and bear arms."
But as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a compelling dissent, the five justices in the majority found no new evidence that the 2nd Amendment was intended to limit the power of government to regulate the use of firearms. They found no new evidence to overturn decades of court precedent.
They have claimed, Stevens wrote, "a far more active judicial role in making vitally important national policy decisions than was envisioned at any time in the 18th, 19th, or 20th centuries."
It’s a relief that the majority didn’t go further in its policy-making on gun control.
The majority opinion states that the D.C. handgun ban and a requirement for trigger locks violate the 2nd Amendment. By virtue of this decision, Chicago’s 1982 ban on handguns is not likely to survive a court challenge. A lawsuit seeking to overturn the Chicago ordinance was filed on Thursday by the Illinois State Rifle Association.
The majority, though, did state that the right under the 2nd Amendment "is not unlimited." So what does that mean? The majority left room for state and local governments to restrict the carrying of concealed weapons in public, to prohibit weapons in "sensitive places such as schools and government buildings," and to regulate the sale of firearms. The majority allowed room for the prohibition of "dangerous and unusual weapons." It did not stipulate what weapons are not "dangerous."
Lower courts are going to be mighty busy figuring out all of this.
We can argue about the effectiveness of municipal handgun bans such as those in Washington and Chicago. They have, at best, had limited impact. People don’t have to go far beyond the city borders to buy a weapon that’s prohibited within the city. (Click here for gun-related crime statistics)
But neither are these laws overly restrictive. Citizens have had the right to protect themselves in their homes with other weapons, such as shotguns.
Some view this court decision as an affirmation of individual rights. But the damage in this ruling is that it takes a significant public policy issue out of the hands of citizens. The people of Washington no longer have the authority to decide that, as a matter of public safety, they will prohibit handgun possession within their borders.
Chicago and the nation saw a decline in gun violence over the last decade or so, but recent news has been ominous. The murder rate in Chicago has risen 13 percent this year. Guns are still the weapon of choice for mayhem in the U.S. About 68 percent of all murders in 2006 were committed with a firearms, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Repeal the 2nd Amendment? Yes, it’s an anachronism.
We won’t repeal the amendment, but at least we can have that debate.
Want to debate whether crime-staggered cities should prohibit the possession of handguns? The Supreme Court has just said, forget about it.
The Supreme Court's invalidation of the District of Columbia's handgun ban powerfully shows that the conservative rhetoric about judicial restraint is a lie. In striking down the law, Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion, joined by the court's four other most conservative justices, is quite activist in pursuing the conservative political agenda of protecting gun owners.
If the terms "judicial activism" and "judicial restraint" have any meaning, it is that a court is activist when it is invalidating laws and overruling precedent, and restrained when deferring to popularly elected legislatures and following prior decisions.
In knocking down the District's 32-year-old ban on handgun possession, the conservatives on the Supreme Court have again shown their willingness to abandon precedent in order to do whatever is necessary to further the agenda of the contemporary political right.
The court's five most conservative members have demonstrated that for all of Justice Antonin Scalia's talk about "originalism" as a coherent constitutional doctrine, those on the judicial right regularly succumb to the temptation to legislate from the bench. They fall in line behind whatever fashions political conservatism is promoting.
Conservative justices claim that they defer to local authority. Not in this case. They insist that political questions should be decided by elected officials. Not in this case. They argue that they pay careful attention to the precise words of the Constitution. Not in this case.....
In fact, it was the court's four more liberal justices who favored judicial modesty, deference to democratic decisions, empowerment of local officials and care in examining the Constitution's actual text and the history behind it. Indeed, the same conservative majority ran roughshod over the work of an elected branch of government in its ruling yesterday on campaign finance law.
It was telling in the gun case that while Scalia argued that the Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home" -- note that the Second Amendment says nothing about "self-defense in the home" -- it was Justice John Paul Stevens in dissent who called for judicial restraint. He asked his conservative colleagues where they were able to find an expansive and absolute right for gun possession.
The court majority, Stevens said, "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons." But such evidence, Stevens insisted, "is nowhere to be found" in the majority opinion. Justice Stephen Breyer also defended the rights of democratically elected local officials in a separate dissent, saying the D.C. ban was "a permissible legislative response to a serious, indeed life-threatening, problem."....
This decision opens people's eyes to the fact that judicial activism is now a habit of the right, not the left, and that "originalism" is too often a sophisticated cover for ideological decision-making by conservative judges.
Even granting [Justice Scalia's] expansive view [of the 2nd Amendment], a modest understanding of the judicial function would not have led to the outright cancellation of the District's laws. Every constitutional right -- whether the right of free speech or the right to be free from intrusive searches and seizures -- is subject to limitation or regulation. Having overturned precedent and established a new standard, the court could and should have heeded the suggestion of the Bush administration that it send the case back to the lower court with guidelines about how gun control laws should be legally scrutinized.
The District's outright ban on handguns may not have survived such scrutiny, but at least the District would have had a chance to defend its laws, including the utterly reasonable and prudent requirement that weapons in the home be secured with trigger locks. To our great dismay, the court instead adopted a legal approach that swept out the core of the District's law and may very well hamper efforts to protect public safety.
My point is that a handgun's convenience when put to good uses is heavily outweighed by its convenience when put to bad ones...
It's this second set of conveniences that led the District of Columbia to ban handguns. Granted, in jurisdictions where gun ownership is permitted, criminals seldom obtain their guns legally. But illegal guns begin life as legal ones.
Glock, Beretta, and other handgun manufacturers are not illegal enterprises; rather, they manufacture a legal product that is subsequently stolen and fenced by criminals. More legal guns therefore mean more illegal guns. More illegal guns mean more people get killed. The inconvenience this poses to the dead and their families, and to society at large, does not concern Scalia.
(Commentary by David Hemenway, PhD, Professor, Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Hemenway is the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center.)
My field of research is public health, and in particular injury and violence prevention. The scientific evidence is very strong that raising the speed limit increases deaths, as does repealing motor cycle helmet laws. The scientific evidence is also very strong that, all other things equal, more guns in the United States means more death-- more homicide, more suicide, more unintentional gun deaths.
So from a public health standpoint, I was disappointed in the recent Supreme Court decision.
This is the first time in the history of the United States that the Second Amendment was used to overturn a gun control law. The decision appears to overturn some 200 years of jurisprudence.
Federalist James Madison's first draft of the Second Amendment contained three parts, all of which seem to be about the militia. The first part began with “A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state…” It was shortened to become “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state.” The majority opinion seems effectively to have erased that phrase.
The second part of the draft remained unchanged. It states “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The phrase “keep and bear Arms” was a military phrase. The majority opinion effectively changes it to read “the right of the people to keep Arms and to bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
The final part of the original draft stated: “but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms.” This phrase was eliminated, but it seems to be about the militia.
The Antifederalists (the minority) had put forward a number of proposed Amendments. Some were accepted—the Second Amendment is almost word-for-word one of their original 14 proposals. Some were not accepted. One of these was “that the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves...or for the purpose of killing game.” The Federalists could easily have also made this proposed Amendment part of the Bill of Rights. But they did not.
Yet the Supreme Court majority has decided that the Second Amendment is not about the militia, but is about an individual right to protect oneself with a firearm.
And not only any firearm, but the majority says that today that means a handgun-- which is unfortunately the weapon of choice in the United States for suicide, for armed robbery and for murder.
The United State has similar rates of (non-gun) crime and (non-gun) violence as the other 25 industrialized democracies. But we have more guns (particularly handguns), the most permissive gun control laws, and by far the most gun homicides (and thus total homicides). From a public health standpoint, I can only hope that the Supreme Court decision will not lead to a substantial weakening of our already generally permissive gun control laws.
Contact: Sally Slovenski (617) 923-6490, sally@freedomstatesalliance.org
Scott Vogel (312) 474-1339, scott@freedomstatesalliance.org
Despite FSA’s Strong Disagreement With the Conservative Majority’s Ruling, the Supreme Court’s Decision Does Not Prohibit Effective Measures From Being Enacted, Such As Universal Background Checks On All Gun Purchases
(June 26th, 2008, Chicago) The Freedom States Alliance strongly disagrees with the gun lobby's belief, now shared by the Supreme Court, that the Second Amendment grants an "individual right" to keep and bear arms. However, even this misguided interpretation of the Second Amendment does not, in anyway, prohibit life-saving and crime-reducing policies from being enacted. Those necessary measures include: requiring background checks on all gun purchases; limiting handgun purchases to one per month; requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms to law enforcement officials; cracking down on illegal guns and gun trafficking; and regulating military-style assault weapons and .50 caliber sniper rifles.
In a reversal of longstanding precedent, the Supreme Court suddenly and dramatically reinterpreted the Second Amendment to strike down the District of Columbia’s handgun ban in a landmark case, District of Columbia v. Heller. Today’s ruling is the first time in over 200 years that the Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment to allow an individual right to keep and bear arms, versus a collective rights interpretation. The Court’s ruling will have no immediate impact beyond the District of Columbia, but the decision is expected to set off a wave of litigation within the justice system and a likely springboard for the gun lobby to challenge other gun violence prevention laws.
On a positive note, Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, acknowledged that reasonable regulations can be imposed on the carrying and sale of guns, and implicitly acknowledged that gun control laws can be imposed. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited...[It is not a] right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. …[The Court’s] opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,” (p. 54-55).
“Despite our strong disappointment with the Court’s ruling favoring an individual right to bear arms, there is no doubt that sensible gun control measures can, and should, be enacted to save lives from gun violence,” said Sally Slovenski, Executive Director of the Freedom States Alliance. "The decision today will, in effect, put more lives at risk from gun violence and will make it more difficult for mayors and law enforcement officials across the country to do their job to keep our communities safe. The reality is that effective and common sense gun laws are necessary for saving lives from the deadly impact of the nearly 300 million guns in civilian hands in our country.”
Gun violence prevention advocates stated that no right is beyond reasonable regulations. “This decision by the Supreme Court should, in no way, be interpreted as an excuse for not taking action to prevent gun violence, and in fact, reinforces the right to implement reasonable regulations. It’s time for policymakers to utilize all the means at their disposal, including regulations, effective enforcement, public education, and non-legislative measures to reduce gun violence in America.” said Scott Vogel, Communications Director of FSA.
Advocates stated unequivocally that the Court’s ruling will reinvigorate their work to save lives from gun violence. “We believe today’s ruling favoring the individual right’s interpretation was an extreme and unfounded position, put forth by a conservative court. We look forward to the day when the Supreme Court is more balanced and has an opportunity to take a second look at this issue and perhaps even overturn this potentially life endangering decision,” said Slovenski.
GunGuys.com is a project of the Freedom States Alliance, working to reduce gun violence in America
Our daily email delivers Gun Guys straight to your inbox every day for free, plus you'll get exclusive commentary not on the website. What are you waiting for? Click here to get it!
Tips? Ideas? Comments? Fan mail? Hate mail? Send it all.
![[today on gun guys]](http://www.gunguys.com/today.gif)
