Why the real defenders of the second amendment oppose the NRA | Corey Brettschneider | Opinion | The Guardian

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: shannonm () gmail com
> Date: March 17, 2018 at 12:03:53 PM EDT
> To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Why the real defenders of the second amendment oppose the NRA | Corey Brettschneider | Opinion | The Guardian
>
> Of possible interest to your informed readers 
>
> Why the real defenders of the second 
> amendment oppose the NRA | Corey Brettschneider | Opinion | The Guardian
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/17/second-amendment-nra-corey-brettschneider
>
> In any debate about guns in America, there’s one aspect that’s seemingly inescapable: the moment when the National 
> Rifle Association (NRA) or other defenders of an anything-goes gun policy recite the second amendment from memory.
>
> Perhaps no subsection of a political movement is so passionately animated by a clause of the US constitution. As many 
> a gun enthusiast is eager to say, gun regulation is a non-starter; the second amendment is the law of the land, so 
> the government can’t tell me what to do with my guns.
>
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>
> But those seeking sensible gun regulation – like the 83% of Americans who support a mandatory waiting period for 
> buying a gun and the 67% of Americans who agree with a ban on assault weapons – should not just accept the distortion 
> of the second amendment as fact. Instead, they should loudly respond that gun regulation’s proponents, not the NRA, 
> are the true defenders of the second amendment. In fact, both supreme court case law and the text of the second 
> amendment itself support reasonable regulations on guns. As written, the constitution and the second amendment permit 
> precisely the kind of regulation Congress should enact.
>
>
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>  Read more
> In 1991, former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Republican appointee, explained why the text of the Second Amendment 
> affirms the importance of gun regulation. The first words of the amendment, Burger pointed out, are “a well regulated 
> Militia.” This language presupposes the idea that the militias should be regulated. So, Burger reasoned, if the 
> amendment rests on the assumption that well-trained state armies could be regulated, then it is sensible to think it 
> also allows Congress to regulate guns among the general citizenry.
>
>  Wayne LaPierre claims a conspiracy, orchestrated by Obama, George Soros and the UN, to seize every gun in America
> The constitutional argument for gun regulation also goes beyond the Second Amendment. The Constitution’s preamble 
> speaks of the need to “insure domestic Tranquility”—a fundamental task of any government that can be aided by 
> regulating deadly weapons. The recent tragedy in Florida—merely the newest in a line of one numbing bloodbath after 
> another, a crisis that no other developed country on earth suffers from—has made it clear that our schools, 
> hospitals, and military are anything but tranquil. In places where they once would have thought themselves safe, 
> citizens fear another attack. This is not only unacceptable, but it also demonstrates how far our country has strayed 
> from a central constitutional principle. The preamble’s call for “domestic Tranquility” and the Second Amendment’s 
> embrace of regulation do not merely allow Congress to act to regulate guns; they impel Congress to do so. 
>
> What about the worry that some forms of regulation still violate the second amendment? As Burger said in 1991, the 
> idea that the second amendment prohibits gun regulation is “one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat the word 
> fraud – on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” And Burger’s view of 
> the amendment squares with what the supreme court has said more recently. 
>
> In the landmark case District of Columbia v Heller, Justice Scalia ruled for the first time in American history that 
> the second amendment protected individual gun rights. He held that a Washington, DC police officer with extensive 
> firearms training had a right to own a gun and store it in his home. The Court ruled that the amendment protected 
> individuals, not just members of a militia. Scalia, however, made it clear that the DC gun law restricting almost all 
> gun ownership was an extreme on the spectrum of regulation—but also that such as spectrum existed. He argued that 
> many other types of regulation did not conflict with the Second Amendment—even as it was first understood in our 
> young nation: bans on assault weapons, Scalia wrote, are “fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting 
> the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’”
>
>
> 'Enough': US students come together in spectacular walkout to end gun violence
>  Read more
> All of the regulation proposals now on the table would clearly fit within the definition of “well-regulated,” and 
> thus are completely compatible with a robust Second Amendment. These proposals include bans on assault weapons, 
> increased waiting periods for purchases, and more comprehensive and widespread background checks. These are the 
> definition of reasonable gun regulations—the types of protective measures that the Constitution not only enabled but 
> called for the government to enact. 
>
> In fact, Scalia said explicitly in his decision that “nothing in our opinion should 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.”
> Indeed, the supreme court recently refused to even consider a case in which a plaintiff asked the court to overturn a 
> ten-day waiting period; his argument was that such an inconvenience was a violation of the Second Amendment. It 
> seemed obvious to the court that such sensible gun legislation does not violate the second amendment. /snip/ 
> continued...
>
>
>
> Sent on the fly from my phone



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