Guns and the Constitution:
The phrase "the right of the people" or some variation of it appears repeatedly in the Bill of Rights, and
nowhere does it actually mean "the right of the government." When the Bill of Rights was written and
adopted, the rights that mattered politically were of one sort — an individual's, or a minority's,
right to be free from interference from the state. Today, rights are most often thought of as
an entitlement to receive something from the state, as opposed to a freedom from interference
by the state. The Second Amendment is, in our view, clearly a right of the latter sort.
Why
Do We 'Keep and Bear Arms'? The Founding Fathers assumed that any government, including the one
they established, could grow into a monster. They argued that only "the people" with a right "to keep
and bear arms" could prevent such a tyranny. James Madison, the "father of the Constitution," stated
that tyrants were "afraid to trust the people with arms," and lauded "the advantage of being armed, which
Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation."
Right to Bear Arms:
Washington, D.C., will become a safer place to live and work thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Thursday
[6/26/2008] against the city's absolute ban on handguns. The Court ruled that the Second Amendment's
guarantee of the right to bear arms is an individual right, not just one that permits states to maintain
militias, striking down one of the nation's toughest anti-gun laws. As someone who lived in the
District at the time the city imposed its ban 32 years ago, I say it's about time.
The Court defers to
plain language. No sulking conservative can imagine the Second Amendment would have been upheld
if Republican presidents had not appointed the five members of yesterday's majority. Who can doubt that
Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry and ol' Bubba would have appointed
judges dedicated to throwing out the constitutional guarantee upheld yesterday?
Silver
Bullet. The 2008 Supreme Court term ended with a bang yesterday as the Justices issued their
most important ruling ever in upholding an individual right to bear arms. The dismaying surprise is that
the Second Amendment came within a single vote of becoming a dead Constitutional letter.
Bill to limit governor's control of guns OK'd by
Senate panel. On a 4-2 party-line vote, the Republican-controlled Senate Government Committee
approved a measure Tuesday [6/20/2006] that would legally bar any [Arizona] governor from using a state of
emergency to place new restrictions on the possession, transfer, sales, carrying, storage, display or use of
firearms or ammunition. The bill also would remove any ability to commandeer and use weapons or
ammunition during any state of war.
It's a shame the states have to pass
laws that reiterate the Second Amendment.
Constitution
protects our right to bear arms. The U.S. Supreme Court's recent affirmation of the "Right of
the People" to bear arms was long overdue. Our U. S. Constitution was written to guarantee that the
civil rights we have would not be abridged by any government entity. After the lessons learned from
the tyrannical rule of the British and the resultant Revolutionary War, the last thing our forefathers
wanted was a government that could remove our rights with the stroke of a pen.
Gun Ban Bill
Would Cripple the Second Amendment, Group Warns. Anti-gun Democrats are trying to make up for
lost time by reintroducing legislation intended to ban so-called "assault" weapons, a Second Amendment group
warns. Gun Owners of America says the "queen of gun control," Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), is trying
once again to outlaw many types of weapons based on their cosmetic features.
Gun
Rights and Presidential Politics: In the District of Columbia, it is a crime to have a handgun.
It also is a crime to have shotguns or rifles unless they are unloaded and disabled. Ordinary people cannot
have a gun, even in their own homes. Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
struck down the law as unconstitutional. The court said the Second Amendment does not allow a law like it
because it keeps Americans living in D.C. from exercising their Second Amendment rights.
The Second Amendment Wedge. Last
week the Supreme Court decided to take on the biggest gun control case in almost seventy years:
District of Columbia v. Heller. The Heller case is an appeal by the DC government from the US
Circuit Court's decision holding unconstitutional D.C.'s ban on privately-owned handguns and severe
limits on other weapons.
D.C.'s Gun Ban Gets Day
in Court. Despite mountains of scholarly research, enough books to fill a library shelf and decades of
political battles about gun control, the Supreme Court will have an opportunity this week that is almost unique for a
modern court when it examines whether the District's handgun ban violates the Second Amendment. The nine justices,
none of whom has ever ruled directly on the amendment's meaning, will consider a part of the Bill of Rights that has
existed without a definitive interpretation for more than 200 years.
9 Seem Set To Rule for Gun Rights. The U.S.
Supreme Court appears ready to acknowledge for the first time that the Second Amendment bestows on Americans
the right to possess guns. While many gun owners have long believed such a right to exist under the
Constitution, it has gone largely unrecognized by the federal courts.
Gun
rights is biggest issue for court to decide. The guns case — including Washington,
D.C.'s ban on handguns — is widely expected to be a victory for supporters of gun rights. Top
officials of a national gun control organization said this week that they expect the handgun ban to be struck
down, but they are hopeful other gun regulations will survive.
USA Today isn't too sure ...
Do you have a legal right to
own a gun? Guns, and questions about how much power the government has to keep people from
owning them, are at the core of one of the most divisive topics in American politics. Nowhere is that
divide more pronounced than in the gap between Americans' beliefs about their rights under the Second
Amendment, and how courts have interpreted the law.
Give gun owners uniformity.
Why does USA TODAY object to uniform laws? The rules of safe driving don't change when you travel from a
state highway onto a federal one. Why should rules for gun owners change when they travel from a state
park to a federal park or wildlife refuge? As it is, gun owners who enjoy going afield in our parks face
a confusing nationwide patchwork of rules and regulations, governed by different agencies and bureaucracies.
It's inconsistent, burdensome and unnecessary. More than half the Senate agrees.
The DC Gun Ban: Gun rights
adhere to the American people, not to government-sanctioned groups. Rights, by definition, are
individual. "Group rights" is an oxymoron. Can anyone seriously contend that the Founders, who
had just expelled their British rulers mostly by use of light arms, did not want the individual farmer,
blacksmith, or merchant to be armed? Those individuals would have been killed or imprisoned by the
King's soldiers if they had relied on a federal armed force to protect them.
Isn't Self-Defense Common Sense?
[Scroll down] In last year's ruling, which the U.S. Supreme Court will soon review, the D.C. Circuit overturned
a Washington, D.C., gun law that bans possession of handguns in the home and requires that rifles and shotguns
be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock." The law thereby effectively bars city
residents from using firearms for self-defense in their own homes. [Senator] Obama evidently considers
that de facto prohibition a "common-sense regulation," since he recently cited Washington's law as an
example of constitutionally permissible gun control.
The Armed Defense of Liberty: Despite the heroic
efforts of Sen. Bob Smith to turn it back, the latest batch of irrational and servile restrictions on the
Second Amendment continues to ooze its way through that allegedly deliberative institution, the
Congress. Perhaps because the gun control debate is now so entirely drenched in the emotive
sludge that is the principal intellectual food of our political establishment this seems a good moment
to recall the deep reasons, the fundamental context, that must inform any responsible deliberations
on the question of an armed citizenry.
Court Rediscovers 2nd Amendment,
Liberals Fear Other 'Rights' May Soon be Found. Tragedy struck leftists all across
America last week when a federal appeals court reviewing the District of Columbia's handgun ban,
ruled that the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed upon by the District.
Second
Amendment Solidified: The Department of Justice issued an extensive
report that very clearly and definitely shows that the Second Amendment was intended
to protect an individual right. … The answer was definitive: "The Second
Amendment secures a right of individuals generally, not a right of states or a right
restricted to persons serving in militias."
Ship captain's
Second Amendment rights upheld. A Warren County ship captain may carry a concealed weapon in New
Jersey waters and ports, state Superior Court Judge John Pursel ruled Wednesday [8/11/2004]. The judge
cited the post-Sept. 11 world of terrorist threats and the recent rise in the terrorist alert system
not the Constitution] as part of the reason for his decision to grant the carrying permit.
The world according to
Dick: The Second Amendment Sisters simply advocate a woman's "right to choose" to own and
carry firearms. But [New Jersey Senate President] Dick Codey thinks the government should make that
choice for them. He knows what's best for a woman.
Supreme
Court Refuses to Confirm Constitutional Right to Bear Arms : The
Supreme Court disappointed gun rights groups Monday [12/01/2003] by refusing to
consider whether the Constitution guarantees people a personal right to own a gun. The
court has never said if the right to "keep and bear arms" applies to individuals.
Gunning for Your Gun
Rights: The United Nations' agenda may not be to overturn the Second Amendment
per se, but it has cleared a path for making enforcement of this constitutional
protection illegal under international law.
New Jersey to
Expand Seizures in Gun Cases. A New Jersey state assemblyman has introduced a
bill that would allow the government to seize the home or car of anyone whose property
contains an illegal firearm. In New Jersey, nearly every gun is considered "illegal."
Gun Control: The
assault weapon statute is purely cosmetic — banning guns because of politically incorrect
features such as bayonet lugs (as if drive-by bayoneting were a problem) or a rifle grip that
protrudes "conspicuously" from the gun's stock. Police statistics from around the
nation show that such guns are rarely used in crime.
Guns and Federalism: Members
of Congress who support gun rights are currently engaged in a dubious tradeoff: to save the Second
Amendment, they've decided to undermine the Tenth.
Restoring the Right to Bear
Arms: For decades, the Second Amendment was consigned to constitutional exile, all but erased
from constitutional law textbooks and effectively banished from the nation's courts. But no more.
Recent developments in the law and in political culture have begun the process of returning the amendment to
its proper place in our constitutional pantheon.
The Individual's Right to
Bear Arms: Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly
when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado,
that "speech, or … the press" also means the Internet, and that "persons, houses,
papers, and effects" also means public telephone booths.
Ninth "Circus" Court
of Appeals Strikes Another Blow to Our Freedoms: Federal
court rules citizens do not have individual right to bear arms.
It's the anti-gun people who are
nuts. This year's Pittsburgh NRA convention set an attendance record. Over the course of
the convention's weekend-long run, more than 61,000 people visited the booths, workshops and meetings.
And, unlike at recent rallies in American cities "celebrating" sports teams' victories, there wasn't a single
act of violence, not a single arrest, no wild drinking or drug-induced demonstrations. ... Come to think of it,
I suppose that's precisely why the convention generated so little attention from the so-called mainstream media.
Gun Control: The Criminal
Lobby. Gullible Americans are not rare. All that is required for a small wealthy elite to
destroy the Second Amendment is a gullible jury and a judge who permits a class action suit to expropriate the
powers of legislators.
Reviving the Second Amendment: On
Oct. 16, [2001,] in United States v. Emerson, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit joined the Bush
administration and respected legal scholars across the political spectrum in affirming the right that each of
us enjoy, as individuals, to own a gun.
How Ted Kennedy Opposes The Second
Amendment: When the history of the 20th century is finally written, one of its key features
will be the wanton slaughter of more than 170 million people, not in war, but by their own
government. The governments that led in this slaughter are the former USSR (65 million) and the
Peoples Republic of China (35 to 40 million). The point to remember is that these governments
were the idols of America's leftists. Part of reason for these and other tyrannical successes was
because the people were first disarmed.
Blacks
Allegedly Victimized By "Racist" Gun Control Laws: Second Amendment experts say current gun
control laws are preventing law abiding African Americans from acting in self-defense against the illegally
armed criminals that infest their inner-city neighborhoods.
Maryland
Police Say Disabled Man Has "No Good Reason" For Handgun: The State of Maryland has denied a
physically disabled citizen a permit to carry a concealed handgun because he does not have a "good and
substantial reason" to be armed.
Where Gun Control Is Going: It is
astonishing that the American people continue to fail to get their collective intellectual arms around the
absurdity and increasingly dangerous threat to human freedom that gun control represents. Banned by
the Second Amendment, restrictions placed upon government by the law of the land are blatantly ignored by
that very same government!
DC
Residents Sue to Keep Guns in Home: Residents of the District of Columbia
have lived with some of the nation's most restrictive gun-control laws since 1976. Six of
those residents, who claim their safety is at risk because they can't defend themselves,
have sued the city to force a change in the law.
Sniper tips trigger firearms
crackdown: Gun advocates fear witch hunt by Montgomery County police… using the 100,000
tips called in during the October sniper terror investigation, reports the Washington Times.
D.C. Gun Law Under Fire: A
Second Amendment group is filing a lawsuit demanding that the nation's capital ease up its gun laws, which
are considered the most restrictive in the nation.
Baltimore
outlaws BB guns for minors: The BB gun, like the classic Red Ryder celebrated in a popular holiday
film, is a traditional Christmas gift that has always come wrapped in a certain risk. Now the toy
carries a threat that has nothing to do with putting an eye out: a $500 fine and two months in jail.
Gun
Control and Freedom: Thomas Jefferson said, "When governments fear the
people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."
FBI
Agents "Miffed" that Gun Owner Contacted Media: Prior to the
capture of "Beltway Sniper" suspects John Allen Muhammad and
John Lee Malvo, an unconfirmed number of Maryland gun owners received surprise
visits from the FBI as part of the investigation. One such gun owner had a surprise
of his own for the agents when they arrived at his home.
Why
worry about a national gun database? There's an obvious problem with
arguing that an existing law is needed to prevent crimes like the sniper attacks when
it has manifestly failed to do so.
NRA
Sticker Is No Reason for Cops to Search Truck, Court Rules
Guns
and Violence: Did you know that water is 19 times more dangerous to a child
than a firearm? In 1996, 805 children died from accidental drownings and 42 died
from firearm accidents.
Gun bans don't
equal freedom: A couple of the West's democracies are behaving less and less
like the bastions of freedom they claim to be and more like authoritarian regimes rife with
little Napoleons who want absolute control over their respective masses.
LaPierre: 9/11 Windfall for
Anti-Gun Lobby: The anti-gun lobby wants you to surrender your freedoms in the name of
security. If Americans fall for it, they will get neither, a new book warns. "Smoke was curling
over the ruins of the World Trade Center when the gun-control lobby swung into action, seizing on that tragedy
to score points in the political arena," National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre and his predecessor
James Jay Baker write in "Shooting Straight: Telling the Truth About Guns in America."
The
Second Amendment Revisited: If the gun control lobby were really sincere
about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, they would welcome the Bush
administration policy, but there is no sincerity. The hysterical reaction is
all about not being able to ban the private ownership of guns. Again and again
their true intent becomes clearer: registration, gun bans, and finally confiscation.
The Second Amendment is Not Enough:
Pro-firearms advocates have been in a defensive posture for too long on this issue. Rather than forever
reacting to the threats by anti-gun advocates, pro-gun advocates should seek a legislative affirmation of the
individual's right to bear arms.
The Second Amendment Strikes Back:
Enemies of the right to self defense using guns, must argue that "the people" in the Second Amendment does not
refer to individuals, despite this interpretation everywhere else in the Bill of Rights when the
Founding Fathers referred to "the people."
Ultimate
Civil Right: To Protect Yourself. by Charlton Heston
The Terrible Fear That People May Exercise Their
Rights: On April 10 [2002] an Ohio appellate court unanimously ruled that Ohio's ban on
carrying concealed weapons, in effect since 1974, violated the people's right to keep and bear arms. The
appellate court also upheld a lower court's dismissal of the prosecution of a pizza deliveryman who carried a
handgun in his waistband for protection while making his deliveries. Since 1851, the Ohio
Constitution has said, "the people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security." In
striking down the ban, the court noted that the framers of the Ohio constitution "put the citizens' rights up
front. We believe they meant what they said." This ruling is a victory for the citizens of Ohio.
Making
the case: The lawlessness of today's racial quota and gun control
liberals may be coming under serious challenge.
Mountaineer
May Carry His Black Powder Rifle: The Second Amendment Foundation has hired an airplane to fly a
pro-gun banner over the crowd at Saturday's football game [9/7/2002] between the University of Wisconsin
Badgers and the West Virginia Mountaineers. "Guns save lives," the banner will read.
Does Bush's
"Project Safe Neighborhoods" Violate the Constitution? A Bush administration program that calls
for federal agents to prosecute gun crimes runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution, some legal scholars
believe. "In actuality and despite what the federal courts have felt constrained to do, the federal
government has no more legitimate constitutional authority over gun crime that happens in one state than it
does over jaywalking or drunk driving," said Gene Healy, Cato Institute legal scholar.
More Injustice on the
Way: Gene Healy, a Cato Institute scholar, recently provided a thorough exploration of the
unintended consequences of the new Bush-Ashcroft plan to federalize gun crimes, known as the Project Safe
Neighborhoods program. The unintended consequences of this law are frightening.
Heston on the right to bear
arms: In an exclusive interview, the NRA chief sounds off on threats to the 2nd Amendment.
Bush Administration Backs
Individual Right to Bear Arms: Reversing the four-decade-long federal interpretation of the
Second Amendment, the Bush administration has told the Supreme Court that it believes the Constitution
protects an individual's right to bear arms.
Are Gun Control Opponents
Crazy? Reflect on this: Hitler was popularly elected. We know what happened in
Germany. Among his first actions was to impose restrictions on gun ownership "For the safety of the
people of Germany." Is this the kind of safety Bill Clinton has in mind for us? The primary goal
of the Second Amendment, and the reason that it is indispensable, is to give each American the ability to
protect himself from a repressive Government and the ability to defend himself where the State never
can — in his home.
"Safety"
is not even worthy of our consideration as an issue. When it
comes to your Second Amendment rights, the issue of
freedom is more important than the issue of safety.
Gun rights decision may
sound the death knell for gun bans: The media has largely ignored a recent Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual the right to bear arms.
Gun
Group Says Second Amendment Foe Exploiting Tragedy: A gun rights group says an anti-gun
congressman is using the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States as an excuse to further his
unconstitutional agenda.
Reading the Second
Amendment: Is [the Second Amendment] so hard to understand? Apparently so. Even
some of its defenders don't like how it is worded because it allegedly breeds misunderstanding. But the
Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights is indeed a well-crafted sentence. By that I mean
that its syntax permits only one reasonable interpretation of the authors' meaning, namely, that the people's
individual right to be armed ought to be respected and that the resulting armed populace will be secure
against tyranny, invasion, and crime. Someone completely ignorant of the eighteenth-century American
political debates but familiar with the English language should be able to make out the meaning easily.
A Freedom Under
Fire: Except for perhaps the question of whether or not to legalize abortion, no public issue of
recent years has absorbed more interest or stirred the violent emotions of thoughtful people (and of those
less so) than the prickly matter of gun control. In the editorial pages of newspapers, before the
committees of Congress, the battle has been joined.
Weapons Scanner Raises
Constitutional Concern: A federal agency is developing a radar-like device that uses
electromagnetic waves to peer through clothing and detect concealed weapons from up to 50 feet away.
News of the planned system comes amid national angst over domestic terrorism while adding a new dimension to
the debate over the constitutionality of high-tech policing practices.
No individual gun
rights? Quotations from the Founding Fathers on the subject of the Second Amendment
The Strange Case of United
States v. Miller: With the extreme polarization of the modern gun debate, this case has assumed
an importance far beyond what anyone expected in 1938.
Dianne
Feinsteins' Latest Incredible Lie.
Militia 101.
The U.S. v. Miller Revisited.
United
States vs Miller : Court opinion & documents.
Who Will Speak for the Second
Amendment?: A new Web site has appeared which accuses Attorney General John Ashcroft
of having expressed "a position on the Second Amendment that is in direct conflict with legal precedent,
historical research, and established Justice Department policy." What exactly did Ashcroft
say? The site quotes a May 17, 2001 letter to National Rifle Association Executive Director
James Jay Baker, in which Ashcroft writes: "…let me state unequivocally my view that the text and
the original intent of the Second Amendment clearly protect the right of individuals to keep and bear
firearms." That is the statement which the Violence Policy Center (VPC) condemns.
Guns, Personal Security,
and Freedom By Richard Burgner.
Firearms
and Freedom: The Second Amendment protects what
is arguably the most important liberty of all, since it safeguards all other rights.
Liberty Belles: Putting your
Second Amendment rights first.
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