Category Archives: Second Amendment

Experience and Results Like No Other

Gov. John R. Kasich continues to be a strong supporter of the right to bear arms and, as governor, has signed every pro-2nd amendment bill that has crossed his desk to defend this basic, constitutional right. John Kasich is a gun-owner himself, and in his 2014 reelection was endorsed by the National Rifle Association for his support of the Second Amendment as an inviolate part of our Constitution.

Removing Burdensome Restrictions for Law-Abiding Concealed Carry Licensees: John Kasich enacted legislation protecting Ohios concealed carry laws, including protecting the privacy of permit holdersandallowing for reciprocity licenses with other stateswhere permit holders can carry their firearms.

Opposing Barack Obamas Gun Control Efforts: John Kasich opposes President Obamas gun control executive orders. The Second Amendment is too important and Obamas hostility to it is too well known for him to be allowed to go around Congress and undermine the Second Amendment. His efforts to expand the federal governments interference with Americans Right to Keep and Bear Arms are wrong and the governor opposes them.

Upholding Ohios Outdoors Traditions: In addition to having a $3.6 billion annual economic impact in Ohio, hunting and fishing are parts of Ohios long tradition of enjoying our natural places. John Kasich upheld this heritage by enacting legislation that removes restrictions on licensing requirements for hunters and by creating new policies to expand hunting rights in Ohio.

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Defending the Second Amendment - Kasich for America

UPDATE 11:43 a.m. ET: President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland, citing bipartisan respect in the past, to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court left by the death to Justice Antonin Scalia.

Garland, 63, is the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where he has served since 1997.

I said I would take this process seriously and I did. I chose a serious man and an exemplary judge, Obama said standing next to Garland in the Rose Garden Wednesday morning. To find someone who just about everyone not only respects, but genuinely likesthat is rare.

Judge Merrick B. Garland speaks after being nominated to the US Supreme Court as U.S. President Barack Obama looks on, in the Rose Garden at the White House, March 16, 2016 in Washington, DC. Garland currently serves as the chief judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and if confirmed by the US Senate, would replace Antonin Scalia who died suddenly last month. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Senate Republicans have vowed to block any nominee Obama puts forward, preferring to let voters choose the kind of justice who will replace Scalia through the 2016 presidential elections.

Garland comes in with a mixed record and will likely face scrutiny from Republicans about his stance on the Second Amendment.

As a Justice Department attorney in the 1990s, he assisted in the high profile prosecutions of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

President Bill Clinton named Garland to the D.C. Circuit Court in 1997 and he was confirmed by a bipartisan vote in the Senate.

Fidelity to the constitution and the law has been the cornerstone of my professional life and it is the hallmark of the kind of judge I have tried to be for the past 18 years, Garland said Tuesday in the Rose Garden. If the Senate sees fit to confirm me to the position for which I have been nominated today, I promise to continue on that course. Mr. president, its a great privilege to be nominated by a fellow Chicagoan.

In the D.C. vs. Heller gun case, which eventually made it to the Supreme Court, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit struck down most of the Washington, D.C., handgun ban. However, Garland joined Judge David Tatel in voting to have the full court reconsider the decision. Garland and Tatel were on the losing side when the Supreme Court recognized the individual right to bear arms in the Heller case and struck down the districts ban.

There is no freedom more fundamental than the right to defend ones life and family, said Erich Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America. The Heller and McDonald decisions are hanging by a thread, as both were decided by 5-4 majorities. If Garland were confirmed, we can expect to see more gun registration, more gun bans, more limitations on ammunition, and all of it would be approved by the Supreme Court.

In a National Review piece, Carrie Severino, chief counsel for the Judicial Crisis Network, also wrote about Garland voting to uphold an executive action by President Clinton to establish what some considered a de facto gun registration requirement.

But Garland has a long record, and, among other things, it leads to the conclusion that he would vote to reverse one of Justice Scalias most important opinions, D.C. vs. Heller, which affirmed that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms. Back in 2007, Judge Garland voted to undo a D.C. Circuit court decision striking down one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. The liberal District of Columbia government had passed a ban on individual handgun possession, which even prohibited guns kept in ones own house for self-defense. A three-judge panel struck down the ban, but Judge Garland wanted to reconsider that ruling. He voted with Judge David Tatel, one of the most liberal judges on that court. As Dave Kopel observed at the time, the [t]he Tatel and Garland votes were no surprise, since they had earlier signaled their strong hostility to gun owner rights in a previous case. Had Garland and Tatel won that vote, theres a good chance that the Supreme Court wouldnt have had a chance to protect the individual right to bear arms for several more years

Garland thought all of these regulations were legal, which tells us two things. First, it tells us that he has a very liberal view of gun rights, since he apparently wanted to undo a key court victory protecting them. Second, it tells us that hes willing to uphold executive actions that violate the rights of gun owners. Thats not so moderate, is it?

Garland does have a somewhat centrist record, siding with the Bush administration in a key terror case. In 2003, he joined an opinion on the D.C. Circuit prohibiting Guantanamo Bay prisoners from challenging their detention from appealing in civilian courts. The Supreme Court, in 2008, overturned this ruling in the case of Rasul v. Bush.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the choice should be up to the voters, and without speaking no ill of Garland, said: This is not about the person. It is about the principle.

Obama said he is doing his job in nominating a justice and called on the Senate and insisted that Republicans in the Senate give Garland a hearing and a vote.

Presidents dont stop working in the final year of their term, Obama said. Neither should a Senator.

Read more here:
Obamas Supreme Court Nominee Revealed

Any discussion of the right to bear arms has to take note of the Second Amendment. Here's Anthony Mason:

At the heart of the debate over guns in America is a single, inscrutable sentence: The Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, whose wording is unusual.

Simon & Schuster

"The Second Amendment says, '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.' What does that mean?"

The most-disputed clause in the Constitution is the phrase about militias, which were a great concern when the Bill of Rights was written in 1792.

"At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, there was a very big controversy about how to allocate military power," said Nelson Lund, professor of constitutional law at George Mason University. He says the states feared the new government would try to disarm the 13 state militias, which required every white male over 16 to own a musket.

"The anti-Federalists were very worried that the states would be deprived of their power to resist federal tyranny," Lund said.

"The militia, sir, is our ultimate safety," Patrick Henry argued. "We can have no security without it."

While guns were commonplace then, so were gun regulations. New York and Boston prohibited the firing of guns within city limits.

And in the notes for the Constitutional Convention, Waldman says, "There's literally not a word about it protecting an individual right for gun ownership for self-protection, hunting, or any of the other things we think about now."

"There's one side that believes that this amendment refers specifically and only to militias," said Mason.

"Well, I know people say that, but it just can't be true," replied Lund. "If you look at what the words say, it says 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms.' It does not say, 'The right of the states' or 'The right of the militias.' It says 'the right of the people.'"

The debate over the Second Amendment came to a head at the Supreme Court in 2008, in a case filed over the Capital's gun laws, called District of Columbia v. Heller. In a 5-4 vote, the court affirmed an individual's right to keep and bear arms, striking down D.C.'s ban on handguns in the home.

'The inherent right of self-defense," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion, "has been central to the Second Amendment right."

But, Scalia added, "The right ... is not unlimited," also leaving room for gun regulation.

Lund said, "It is absolutely a continuing grey area."

Another grey area is how the court might rule on future Second Amendment issues after the sudden death of Justice Scalia in February.

"So, you know, a lot depends on who replaces Justice Scalia," said Lund.

For more info:

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Parsing the Second Amendment - CBS News

Created on December 15, 1791, the Second Amendment in the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights that establishes the right of citizens to possess firearms for lawful purposes.[a] It says, "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."[2]

When America was being colonized by European countries, firearms were very important to colonists.[3] When Europeans came here they brought with them the idea of land ownership by an individual.[4] They received this right from their king through land grants.[4] This was completely foreign to Native Americans who considered a particular territory belonged to the tribe.[4] Colonists defended their claims against Native Americans and other Europeans whose king may have granted them the same lands.[3] They also needed firearms for hunting. In many towns and villages, men were required to own firearms for the defense of the community. Most colonists coming to America in the 17th century had no experience as soldiers.[5] The British kept few soldiers in the colonies and colonists soon found they needed to establish militias.[5]

Colonies had militia laws that required every able-bodied man to be available for militia duty and to provide his own arms.[5] In 1774 and 1775, the British government, which now had a larger presence, attempted to disarm American colonists. This caused the formation of private militias independent of any control by the governors appointed by the British government.[5] The Minutemen who opposed the British Army at the Battles of Lexington and Concord were an independent militia.[5] After the American Revolutionary War, the framers of the Constitution, like most Americans of the time, distrusted standing armies and trusted militias.[5] After the Revolutionary war, state militias were trusted to defend the country. The Articles of Confederation, the new nation's first constitution, called for each state to maintain a well-armed militia. Congress could only form a standing army by approval of nine of the thirteen states. This was one of the weaknesses that led to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and a new constitution. This gave Congress the power to call up the militias to defend the country against any foreign power. In the 18th century, the word "army" meant mercenaries.[5] Americans distrusted standing armies and were afraid they could be used to take over the country.[6]Oliver Cromwell and his military dictatorship of England was still well-remembered.[6]

Virginia was one of the first colonies to adopt a state constitution. They included the words: "a well regulated Militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free State."[3] Other states followed with similar wording in their own constitutions. Pennsylvania declared: the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power."[3] In 1781 the Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation. This recognized the thirteen original states had the power to govern themselves. They acted collectively to have a congress, but did not provide any money to run it. There was no president and no court system. This confederation of states proved to be a very poor form of central government.

The Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from May 25 to September 17, 1787.[7] The purpose of the Convention was to revise the Articles of Confederation. But it became clear that the intention many of its members, including James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, was to create a new government rather than fix the existing one. The delegates elected George Washington to preside over the Convention. They eventually agreed on agreed on Madison's Virginia Plan and began to make changes. The result was the Constitution of the United States and the present form of government.[7]

The constitution debate at Philadelphia caused two groups to form, the Federalists and the Anti-federalists. The federalists wanted a strong central government. The anti-federalists wanted the state governments to have the authority. The vote on the new Constitution was passed on a promise by federalists to support a Bill of Rights to be added to the Constitution.[8] Originally 12 amendments were considered. But in their final form, 10 amendments to the Constitution were agreed on. The Bill of Rights, as the first 10 amendments came to be called, originally applied to the national government rather than to states.[8] Many states already had their own Bill of Rights.[8] The Bill of Rights were ratified and went into effect in 1791.

The second amendment was a result of several proposals being combined together and simplified into just 27 words.[9] This simplification has caused many debates over gun ownership and individual rights. Historians, judges and others have repeatedly looked for the intended meaning by the 18th century writers of this amendment. [9] Different interpretations of the Second Amendment still cause public debates concerning firearm regulations and gun control.[9]

The case of District of Columbia v. Heller brought before the Supreme Court was based on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision written by Judge Laurence H. Silberman.[10] The decision made the ban on guns by the District of Columbia invalid.[10] The decision was based on the second comma (after the word "state") as proof that the Second Amendment allows individuals the right to carry a gun.[10] This is in addition to the right of states to maintain militias.[10]

The Second Amendment ratified by the States and approved by the Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, said:

The version passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington (but never ratified by the States) said:

More here:
Second Amendment to the United States Constitution - Simple ...

The Second Amendment

Modern debates about the Second Amendment have focused on whether it protects a private right of individuals to keep and bear arms, or a right that can be exercised only through militia organizations like the National Guard. This question, however, was not even raised until long after the Bill of Rights was adopted.

Many in the Founding generation believed that governments are prone to use soldiers to oppress the people. English history suggested that this risk could be controlled by permitting the government to raise armies (consisting of full-time paid troops) only when needed to fight foreign adversaries. For other purposes, such as responding to sudden invasions or other emergencies, the government could rely on a militia that consisted of ordinary civilians who supplied their own weapons and received some part-time, unpaid military training.

The onset of war does not always allow time to raise and train an army, and the Revolutionary War showed that militia forces could not be relied on for national defense. The Constitutional Convention therefore decided that the federal government should have almost unfettered authority to establish peacetime standing armies and to regulate the militia.

This massive shift of power from the states to the federal government generated one of the chief objections to the proposed Constitution. Anti-Federalists argued that the proposed Constitution would take from the states their principal means of defense against federal usurpation. The Federalists responded that fears of federal oppression were overblown, in part because the American people were armed and would be almost impossible to subdue through military force.

Implicit in the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists were two shared assumptions. First, that the proposed new Constitution gave the federal government almost total legal authority over the army and militia. Second, that the federal government should not have any authority at all to disarm the citizenry. They disagreed only about whether an armed populace could adequately deter federal oppression.

The Second Amendment conceded nothing to the Anti-Federalists desire to sharply curtail the military power of the federal government, which would have required substantial changes in the original Constitution. Yet the Amendment was easily accepted because of widespread agreement that the federal government should not have the power to infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms, any more than it should have the power to abridge the freedom of speech or prohibit the free exercise of religion.

Much has changed since 1791. The traditional militia fell into desuetude, and state-based militia organizations were eventually incorporated into the federal military structure. The nations military establishment has become enormously more powerful than eighteenth century armies. We still hear political rhetoric about federal tyranny, but most Americans do not fear the nations armed forces and virtually no one thinks that an armed populace could defeat those forces in battle. Furthermore, eighteenth century civilians routinely kept at home the very same weapons they would need if called to serve in the militia, while modern soldiers are equipped with weapons that differ significantly from those generally thought appropriate for civilian uses. Civilians no longer expect to use their household weapons for militia duty, although they still keep and bear arms to defend against common criminals (as well as for hunting and other forms of recreation).

The law has also changed. While states in the Founding era regulated gunsblacks were often prohibited from possessing firearms and militia weapons were frequently registered on government rollsgun laws today are more extensive and controversial. Another important legal development was the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Second Amendment originally applied only to the federal government, leaving the states to regulate weapons as they saw fit. Although there is substantial evidence that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to protect the right of individuals to keep and bear arms from infringement by the states, the Supreme Court rejected this interpretation in United States v. Cruikshank (1876).

Until recently, the judiciary treated the Second Amendment almost as a dead letter. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), however, the Supreme Court invalidated a federal law that forbade nearly all civilians from possessing handguns in the nations capital. A 54 majority ruled that the language and history of the Second Amendment showed that it protects a private right of individuals to have arms for their own defense, not a right of the states to maintain a militia.

The dissenters disagreed. They concluded that the Second Amendment protects a nominally individual right, though one that protects only the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. They also argued that even if the Second Amendment did protect an individual right to have arms for self-defense, it should be interpreted to allow the government to ban handguns in high-crime urban areas.

Two years later, in McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), the Court struck down a similar handgun ban at the state level, again by a 54 vote. Four Justices relied on judicial precedents under the Fourteenth Amendments Due Process Clause. Justice Thomas rejected those precedents in favor of reliance on the Privileges or Immunities Clause, but all five members of the majority concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment protects against state infringement the same individual right that is protected from federal infringement by the Second Amendment.

Notwithstanding the lengthy opinions in Heller and McDonald, they technically ruled only that government may not ban the possession of handguns by civilians in their homes. Heller tentatively suggested a list of presumptively lawful regulations, including bans on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, bans on carrying firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, laws restricting the commercial sale of arms, bans on the concealed carry of firearms, and bans on weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes. Many issues remain open, and the lower courts have disagreed with one another about some of them, including important questions involving restrictions on carrying weapons in public.

The right to keep and bear arms is a lot like the right to freedom of speech. In each case, the Constitution expressly protects a liberty that needs to be insulated from the ordinary political process.

Gun control is as much a part of the Second Amendment as the right to keep and bear arms. The text of the amendment, which refers to a well regulated Militia, suggests as much.

Not a Second Class Right: The Second Amendment Today by Nelson Lund

The right to keep and bear arms is a lot like the right to freedom of speech. In each case, the Constitution expressly protects a liberty that needs to be insulated from the ordinary political process. Neither right, however, is absolute. The First Amendment, for example, has never protected perjury, fraud, or countless other crimes that are committed through the use of speech. Similarly, no reasonable person could believe that violent criminals should have unrestricted access to guns, or that any individual should possess a nuclear weapon.

Inevitably, courts must draw lines, allowing government to carry out its duty to preserve an orderly society, without unduly infringing the legitimate interests of individuals in expressing their thoughts and protecting themselves from criminal violence. This is not a precise science or one that will ever be free from controversy.

One judicial approach, however, should be unequivocally rejected. During the nineteenth century, courts routinely refused to invalidate restrictions on free speech that struck the judges as reasonable. This meant that speech got virtually no judicial protection. Government suppression of speech can usually be thought to serve some reasonable purpose, such as reducing social discord or promoting healthy morals. Similarly, most gun control laws can be viewed as efforts to save lives and prevent crime, which are perfectly reasonable goals. If thats enough to justify infringements on individual liberty, neither constitutional guarantee means much of anything.

During the twentieth century, the Supreme Court finally started taking the First Amendment seriously. Today, individual freedom is generally protected unless the government can make a strong case that it has a real need to suppress speech or expressive conduct, and that its regulations are tailored to that need. The legal doctrines have become quite complex, and there is room for disagreement about many of the Courts specific decisions. Taken as a whole, however, this body of case law shows what the Court can do when it appreciates the value of an individual right enshrined in the Constitution.

The Second Amendment also raises issues about which reasonable people can disagree. But if the Supreme Court takes this provision of the Constitution as seriously as it now takes the First Amendment, which it should do, there will be some easy issues as well.

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) is one example. The right of the people protected by the Second Amendment is an individual right, just like the right[s] of the people protected by the First and Fourth Amendments. The Constitution does not say that the Second Amendment protects a right of the states or a right of the militia, and nobody offered such an interpretation during the Founding era. Abundant historical evidence indicates that the Second Amendment was meant to leave citizens with the ability to defend themselves against unlawful violence. Such threats might come from usurpers of governmental power, but they might also come from criminals whom the government is unwilling or unable to control.

McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) was also an easy case under the Courts precedents. Most other provisions of the Bill of Rights had already been applied to the states because they are deeply rooted in this Nations history and tradition. The right to keep and bear arms clearly meets this test.

The text of the Constitution expressly guarantees the right to bear arms, not just the right to keep them. The courts should invalidate regulations that prevent law-abiding citizens from carrying weapons in public, where the vast majority of violent crimes occur. First Amendment rights are not confined to the home, and neither are those protected by the Second Amendment.

Nor should the government be allowed to create burdensome bureaucratic obstacles designed to frustrate the exercise of Second Amendment rights. The courts are vigilant in preventing government from evading the First Amendment through regulations that indirectly abridge free speech rights by making them difficult to exercise. Courts should exercise the same vigilance in protecting Second Amendment rights.

Some other regulations that may appear innocuous should be struck down because they are little more than political stunts. Popular bans on so-called assault rifles, for example, define this class of guns in terms of cosmetic features, leaving functionally identical semi-automatic rifles to circulate freely. This is unconstitutional for the same reason that it would violate the First Amendment to ban words that have a French etymology, or to require that French fries be called freedom fries.

In most American states, including many with large urban population centers, responsible adults have easy access to ordinary firearms, and they are permitted to carry them in public. Experience has shown that these policies do not lead to increased levels of violence. Criminals pay no more attention to gun control regulations than they do to laws against murder, rape, and robbery. Armed citizens, however, prevent countless crimes and have saved many lives. Whats more, the most vulnerable peopleincluding women, the elderly, and those who live in high crime neighborhoodsare among the greatest beneficiaries of the Second Amendment. If the courts require the remaining jurisdictions to stop infringing on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms, their citizens will be more free and probably safer as well.

The Reasonable Right to Bear Arms by Adam Winkler

Gun control is as much a part of the Second Amendment as the right to keep and bear arms. The text of the amendment, which refers to a well regulated Militia, suggests as much. As the Supreme Court correctly noted in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the militia of the founding era was the body of ordinary citizens capable of taking up arms to defend the nation. While the Founders sought to protect the citizenry from being disarmed entirely, they did not wish to prevent government from adopting reasonable regulations of guns and gun owners.

Although Americans today often think that gun control is a modern invention, the Founding era had laws regulating the armed citizenry. There were laws designed to ensure an effective militia, such as laws requiring armed citizens to appear at mandatory musters where their guns would be inspected. Governments also compiled registries of civilian-owned guns appropriate for militia service, sometimes conducting door-to-door surveys. The Founders had broad bans on gun possession by people deemed untrustworthy, including slaves and loyalists. The Founders even had laws requiring people to have guns appropriate for militia service.

The wide range of Founding-era laws suggests that the Founders understood gun rights quite differently from many people today. The right to keep and bear arms was not a libertarian license for anyone to have any kind of ordinary firearm, anywhere they wanted. Nor did the Second Amendment protect a right to revolt against a tyrannical government. The Second Amendment was about ensuring public safety, and nothing in its language was thought to prevent what would be seen today as quite burdensome forms of regulation.

The Founding-era laws indicate why the First Amendment is not a good analogy to the Second. While there have always been laws restricting perjury and fraud by the spoken word, such speech was not thought to be part of the freedom of speech. The Second Amendment, by contrast, unambiguously recognizes that the armed citizenry must be regulatedand regulated well. This language most closely aligns with the Fourth Amendment, which protects a right to privacy but also recognizes the authority of the government to conduct reasonable searches and seizures.

The principle that reasonable regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment has been affirmed throughout American history. Ever since the first cases challenging gun controls for violating the Second Amendment or similar provisions in state constitutions, courts have repeatedly held that reasonable gun lawsthose that dont completely deny access to guns by law-abiding peopleare constitutionally permissible. For 150 years, this was the settled law of the landuntil Heller.

Heller, however, rejected the principle of reasonableness only in name, not in practice. The decision insisted that many types of gun control laws are presumptively lawful, including bans on possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, bans on concealed carry, bans on dangerous and unusual weapons, restrictions on guns in sensitive places like schools and government buildings, and commercial sale restrictions. Nearly all gun control laws today fit within these exceptions. Importantly, these exceptions for modern-day gun laws unheard of in the Founding era also show that lawmakers are not limited to the types of gun control in place at the time of the Second Amendments ratification.

In the years since Heller, the federal courts have upheld the overwhelming majority of gun control laws challenged under the Second Amendment. Bans on assault weapons have been consistently upheld, as have restrictions on gun magazines that hold more than a minimum number of rounds of ammunition. Bans on guns in national parks, post offices, bars, and college campuses also survived. These decisions make clear that lawmakers have wide leeway to restrict guns to promote public safety so long as the basic right of law-abiding people to have a gun for self-defense is preserved.

Perhaps the biggest open question after Heller is whether the Second Amendment protects a right to carry guns in public. While every state allows public carry, some states restrict that right to people who can show a special reason to have a gun on the street. To the extent these laws give local law enforcement unfettered discretion over who can carry, they are problematic. At the same time, however, many constitutional rights are far more limited in public than in the home. Parades can be required to have a permit, the police have broader powers to search pedestrians and motorists than private homes, and sexual intimacy in public places can be completely prohibited.

The Supreme Court may yet decide that more stringent limits on gun control are required under the Second Amendment. Such a decision, however, would be contrary to the text, history, and tradition of the right to keep and bear arms.

More here:
Second Amendment - National Constitution Center

In 2008, the Supreme Court of the United States decided in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects a civilian's right to keep a gun in his home. In 2010, the court decided in McDonald v. Chicago that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment limits the power of state and local governments to outlaw the possession of handguns by private citizens. The vote in each case was five-to-four not exactly a ringing endorsement of the court's reasoning in either case. But for now, the law of the land with regard to easy access to guns is settled.

The Second Amendment is enthroned mistakenly, but as a matter of law as a fundamental dimension of individual freedom. The practical result is that we must live with carnage by firearms as a daily fact of American life.

Surely, the timid voices of reason and humanity whisper, there is some limit to the atrocities that Americans will tolerate. When Adam Lanza, with no prior criminal history nor treatment for mental illness, killed 26 people including 20 first-grade students at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on December 14, 2012, the nation was riveted and horrified. Something this unspeakable, this ghastly, this straight-out-of-hell, changed exactly nothing in federal law.

Then, in June of this year, a gunman killed nine churchgoers in Charleston, S.C. Two months later, a Virginia TV news crew was slaughtered on air, and the deed posted almost immediately to social media by the killer. And Thursday, a gunman killed at least 9 people and wounded others on the campus of Oregon's Umpqua Community College.

What will it take to shock us out of our torpor? Another dead president? Not likely half the country will applaud it. How about a dozen people inspired by ISIS slipping simultaneously into the Mall of America and unveiling the assault weapons they have obtained in perfectly legal ways? I cannot imagine what level of gun violence will serve more to horrify than to entertain.

It is certainly a respectable idea to accept the Second Amendment and treat death by firearms as a public health issue. It is doomed to fail, however, because it isn't the criminal or the psychotic who produces the murder, it's the easy means to act out one's fantasies that produces the criminal and the psychotic. Millions of guns, thousands of gun deaths.

Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, the leading dissenter in Heller and McDonald, has published a wise little book, "Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution." He suggests five words be added to the Second Amendment so that it reads "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed."

I say, let's get rid of the Second Amendment altogether. Let the states and Congress regulate firearms as they see fit. Some states, most of them without big-city violence, will retain laws that allow citizens to carry concealed firearms. Gang-ridden Chicago will try again to crack down on guns. Congress will reconsider universal background checks and the prohibition of assault weapons.

As Justice Stevens informs us in his book, "legislatures are in a far better position than judges to assess the wisdom of such rules and to evaluate the costs and benefits that rule changes can be expected to produce. It is those legislators, rather than federal judges, who should make the decisions that will determine what kinds of firearms should be available to private citizens, and when and how they may be used. Constitutional provisions that curtail the legislative power to govern in this area unquestionably do more harm than good."

And we've all already seen enough harm.

Hal Riedl retired from the Maryland Division of Correction in 2010, and from the office of the state's attorney for Baltimore City in December 2014. His email is halriedl@msn.com.

Continued here:
Repeal the Second Amendment - Baltimore Sun

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on September 8, 2015 at 10:28 am

The U.K. Telegraph is doing the job American journalists wont do, and has set out to get a rough idea of where Republican candidates stand on the issue of Second Amendment rights. They asked whether []

on August 18, 2015 at 6:31 am

Well, its almost here folks! Can you tell? Parents are smiling, kids are grumbling, teachers are well, yeah with the kids, so teachers are grumbling too. The 2015-16 school year is almost upon us! Anyone []

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2nd Amendment Archives - Bearing Arms

After going virtually unchallenged for more than one hundred years, Americans right to own guns was one of the hottest political topics of the second half of the 20th Century. The issue has calmed somewhat in the early days of the 21st Century, but if history is our guide, the debate is going nowhere until an inevitable and definitive ruling is handed down by the nations courts: does the Second Amendment apply to individual citizens?

1791: The Second Amendment is Ratified

The ink had hardly dried on the ratification papers of the Constitution before a political movement was undertaken to amend the framing document to declare gun ownership as a right.

A select committee assembled to review amendments proposed by James Madison authored the language that would become the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights: 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.

1871: NRA Founded

The National Rifle Association was founded by a pair of Union soldiers in 1871, not as a political lobby but as an effort to promote the shooting of rifles. However, the organization would grow to become the face of America's pro-gun lobby in the 20th Century.

1822: Bliss v. Commonwealth Brings Individual Right Into Question

The Second Amendments intent for individual Americans first came into question in 1822, in Bliss v. Commonwealth. The court case arose in Kentucky after a man was indicted for carrying a sword concealed in a cane.

He was convicted and fined $100.

Bliss appealed the conviction, citing a provision in the Commonwealths constitution that states: The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state, shall not be questioned.

In a majority vote with just one judge dissenting, the court overturned the conviction against Bliss and ruled the law unconstitutional and void.

1856: Dred Scott v. Sandford Upholds Individual Right

The Second Amendment as an individual right was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in its decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1856. With the rights of slaves in question, the nations highest court opined on the intent of the Second Amendment for the first time, writing that affording slaves full rights of American citizenship would include the right to keep and carry arms wherever they went.

1934: National Firearms Act Brings About First Major Gun Control

The first major effort to eliminate private ownership of firearms came with the National Firearms Act of 1934. A direct response of the rise of gangster violence in general, and the Saint Valentines Day massacre in particular, the National Firearms Act sought to circumvent the Second Amendment by controlling firearms through a tax excise ($200 for each gun sale).

The National Firearms Act targeted fully-automatic weapons, short-barreled shotguns and rifles, pen and cane guns, and other firearms defined as gangster weapons.

1938: Federal Firearms Act Requires License for Dealers

The Federal Firearms Act of 1938 required anyone selling or shipping firearms to be licensed through the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Federal Firearms License (FFL) stipulated that guns could not be sold to persons convicted of certain crimes and required sellers to log the names and addresses of anyone they sold guns to.

1968: Gun Control Act Ushers In New Regulations

Thirty years after Americas first sweeping reform of gun laws, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy helped to usher in new federal legislation with wide-ranging implications. The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibited mail order sales of rifles and shotguns, increased license requirements for sellers and broadened the list of persons prohibited from owning a firearm to include convicted felons, drug users and the mentally incompetent.

1994: Brady Act and Assault Weapons Ban

Two new federal laws passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994 became the hallmark of gun control efforts of the latter 20th Century.

The first, the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act, required a five-day waiting period and background check for the sale of handguns, while also requiring a National Instant Criminal Background Check System to be created. The second, the Assault Weapons Ban (officially entitled the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act) banned a number of rifles defined as assault weapons, including many semi-automatic, military-style rifles such as the AK-47 and SKS.

2004: Assault Weapons Ban Sunsets

A Republican-controlled Congress refused to pass a reauthorization of the Assault Weapons Ban in 2004, allowing the ban to expire. President George W. Bush was criticized by gun control supporters for not actively pressuring Congress to renew the ban, while gun rights supporters criticized him for indicating that he would sign a reauthorization if Congress passed it.

2008: D.C. v. Heller is a Major Setback for Gun Control

Gun rights proponents were thrilled in 2008 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment extends gun ownership rights to individuals. The decision affirmed an earlier decision by a lower appeals court and struck down handgun bans in Washington D.C. as unconstitutional.

The case was lauded as the first Supreme Court case to affirm the right of an individual to keep and bear arms in accordance with the Second Amendment. However, the ruling applied only to federal enclaves, such as the District of Columbia. Justices did not opine on the Second Amendments application to the states.

2010: Gun Owners Score Another Victory in McDonald v. Chicago

Gun rights supporters scored their second major Supreme Court victory in 2010, when the high court affirmed the individual right to own guns in McDonald v. Chicago.

The ruling, which was an inevitable follow-up to D.C. v. Heller, marked the first time that the Supreme Court ruled the provisions of the Second Amendment extend to the states. The ruling overturned an earlier decision by a lower court in a legal challenge to Chicagos ordinance banning the possession of handguns by its citizens.

See the original post:
History of Gun Rights - a Timeline of the 2nd Amendment

CALIFORNIA | LOCAL

July 2, 2000 | LINDA ASHTON, ASSOCIATED PRESS

They lock the gate to Canada at 5 p.m. But in this woodsy corner of northeastern Washington, no one really seems to mind the wait until it reopens promptly at 9 the next morning. In an emergency, there's a border crossing open until midnight about 10 miles to the west. "This part of the country is still kind of backward. I like it that way.

NEWS

May 13, 2000 | RICHARD SIMON, TIMES STAFF WRITER

Their counterdemonstration in support of gun rights will be smaller than the Million Mom March. But the gun-owning women who make up the Second Amendment Sisters feel just as passionately about their cause. "The anti-gun factions constantly say that if it saves one life, it's worth it," said Debra Collins, who once used a 12-gauge shotgun to defend herself from an attack by her ex-husband at 4 o'clock in the morning. "Well, my firearm saved one life--mine."

NEWS

July 22, 1999 | MICHAEL HARRIS, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Like many another old-timer, Leon Uris looks at America and doesn't like what he sees. Gun manufacturers peddling ever more lethal weaponry under the cover of the Second Amendment. Media grown hysterical and trivial. Racial sores left to fester. The nation's "social agenda" abandoned in favor of corporate greed. A general falling-off of virtue, so that the heroic Marines of World War II he wrote about in his first novel, "Battle Cry," are grotesquely parodied by right-wing militiamen.

CALIFORNIA | LOCAL

May 31, 1994

Your editorial "Fear of Gun Crime: Deeper Than Any Set of Statistics" (May 22) hits very wide of the bull's-eye. Though criminal usage of firearms is up, so is successful civilian usage in justified self-defense, to over 2 million per annum. Regarding the meaning of the Second Amendment, you're only half right. The constitutional framers were rightly afraid of a dictatorial central government; however, the Second Amendment does in fact confirm an individual right to own arms.

CALIFORNIA | LOCAL

May 24, 1994

I was especially intrigued by the last paragraph of "Handgun Crime Soaring in U.S., Report Says," May 17. I quote, "The survey also found that 38% of the victims who were armed attacked the individuals seeking to harm them. One-fifth of those attempting to protect themselves with a firearm were injured, compared to almost half who used other weapons or had no weapon at all." I guess it comes as no surprise that the notoriously anti-gun Times would bury this intriguing bit of news at the very end. SAM BRUNSTEIN Glendale By now everyone knows the position of the National Rifle Assn.

NEWS

May 8, 1994

In Paula Poundstone's piece ("The Good Old Days? Somebody Stole 'Em," Laugh Lines, April 25) she makes the false statement regarding the Old West that "they didn't have the evil NRA then because nobody was against guns to begin with." In fact, the National Rifle Assn. was incorporated in 1871 during the relatively brief period between the Civil War and the turn of the century that we think of as the "Wild West" period. It was during this era that attempts were made to disenfranchise and leave defenseless newly freed blacks by not allowing them to possess firearms as all other Americans could.

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Articles about Second Amendment - latimes

Johnny Isaksons Position Statement on Second Amendment Rights

I firmly believe that we do not need more gun control in America; rather we need more criminal control. Therefore, I support instant background checks on all retail sales of guns to prevent convicted felons from obtaining them, but I do not support waiting periods or the registration of any firearm. I will continue to oppose any attempts to crack down on law-abiding firearms owners, rather than punishing criminals who use guns.

Additionally, the mass shootings by mentally unstable individuals over the past years should make us pause and take stock. After 9/11, we came together to see what we could do to prevent another attack. The work of the 9/11 Commission made flying safer and has helped us prevent another hijacking of a U.S. plane by terrorists. In the wake of these mass shootings, we should evaluate in a thoughtful process gun safety, mental health, school security and all other components that contributed to these horrendous acts of violence.

I have earned A ratings from the National Rifle Association since arriving in Congress for my consistent support of pro-Second Amendment legislation. I will continue to work for commonsense legislation that keeps our children safe without infringing upon our Second Amendment rights.

The rest is here:
Second Amendment - Issue Statements - U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson