Will we
ever do anything about the plague of guns?
Shootings happen daily, and mass shootings (defined as events at which
four or more are shot) occur about every one and one-half
days.[26]
That is cause enough for alarm, but shootings at schools are a sign like
no other of the firearm disease.
The
interest in change triggered by student protests is encouraging, and finally
there has been some action. Florida
enacted a law which raises the age for gun purchase to 21 and bans bump stocks,
but it also authorizes and funds arming some school personnel, pleasing the
NRA. In New Jersey, which has
relatively strict gun control laws, the governor issued an executive order
under which the state will release a report every three months listing the
states that are the source of guns used in crimes in New Jersey. More than 80% of them come from outside the
state. Stronger controls are under
consideration in the legislature.
The Vermont legislature passed measures
that include a ban on bump stocks, limits on the size of magazines, expansion
of background checks on buyers and raising the purchase age. Other states, and cities, have enacted or
considered additional controls. [27]
Citibank
announced a policy, applicable to "clients who offer credit cards backed
by Citigroup or borrow money, use banking services or raise capital through the
company," prohibiting the sale of firearms to customers who have not
passed a background check or who are younger than 21, and barring the sale of
bump stocks and high-capacity magazines.[28]
However,
in response to the students’ pleas, there have been nasty, idiotic attacks and
conspiracy theories from those opposed to any progressive change. Ted Nugent,
NRA board member, offered this sentence-fragment appraisal of the surviving, protesting Parkland students:
"The lies from these poor, mushy-brained children who have been fed lies
and parrot lies." On the other
hand, "The National Rifle Association are [sic] a bunch of American
families who have a voice to stand up for our God-given, constitutionally given
right to keep and bear arms." It
is good to know that God, as well as the Founders, decreed civil warfare.
Nugent
made an appearance on the Alex Jones show, and the two engaged in a contest to
see who is the most weirdly out of control.[29] Nugent offered this cogent evaluation of
contemporary politics: "Don’t ask why [gun control and other awful,
un-American proposals are made]. Just know that evil, dishonesty, and scam
artists have always been around and that right now they’re liberal, they’re
Democrat, they’re RINOs, they’re Hollywood, they’re fake news, they’re media,
they’re academia, and they’re half of our government, at least. . . . There are
rabid coyotes running around. . . . Keep your gun handy, and every time you see
one, you shoot one." That’s why we
need guns: to shoot political enemies.
As Nugent
implied, the supposed basis for packing heat is that gun possession is
protected by the Second Amendment.
Since 2008, gun-possession advocates have pointed to Heller
v. District of Columbia, in which Justice Scalia and friends
purported to find a private, non-militia right to possess and carry a firearm. However, Heller
confirmed rather than established that claim. On February 20, I mentioned the
Second Amendment Foundation, established in 1974, as an early manifestation of
that theory. Here’s another, from
popular fiction, in 1975: "Nobody was ever going to keep firearms out of
the hands of butterfingered idiots. Nobody was trying, thanks to the National
Rifle Association and a misreading of the Constitution of the United
States."[30]
One of
the reasons often cited for protecting gun ownership — and the actual
holding in Heller
— is self-defense in the home.
However, a gun in the home "is more likely to be used to kill or
injure an innocent person in the home than a threatening
intruder,"[31] so it’s a weak reed on which to
lean in demanding unlimited ownership of guns.
Because
of the long-standing misinterpretation, now sanctioned by the Supreme Court,
repeal of the Second Amendment is tempting as a cure for the disease. Former Justice John Paul Stevens proposed
just that in a recent column.[32] He first set forth the core of his dissent
in Heller: "Concern that a national standing army
might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption
of that amendment, which provides that ‘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.’" He added: "Today that concern is
a relic of the 18th century."
That’s an interesting variation on the original-intent theory: the
interest which the Amendment was intended to serve no longer is
recognized.
Even if
still relevant, it is not being applied as intended: "For over 200 years
after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not
placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control
legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could
prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no
reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a ‘well regulated
militia’.”
The Heller
decision was wrong, as a matter of constitutional interpretation and as a
matter of policy. According to Stevens
the solution is to be rid of the source.
"Overturning that decision via a constitutional amendment to get
rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the
N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun
control legislation than any other available option." While I agree that misinterpretation of the
Amendment is a major prop for our gun culture, and that we would be better
off without it, I don’t think that
repeal would be simple, or easy. Also,
while repeal would undercut the NRA, an attempt to repeal would empower it, by
playing into the gun lobby’s claim that liberals, the government, the deep
state, are about to confiscate everyone’s hunting rifle. The better approach is to enact meaningful
restrictions, including licensing, and rely on the numerous ambiguities in Heller
to permit them.
___________________
26. http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
27. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/09/us/gun-laws-since-parkland/index.html
28. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/business/citigroup-gun-control-policy. html
29. https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/04/06/nra-s-ted-nugent-compares-democrats-rabid-coyotes-keep-your-gun-handy-and-every-time-you-see-one-you/219877
30. Lockridge, Or Was He Pushed?
31. http://lawcenter.giffords.org/facts/statistics/ For an awful example, see
32. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens-repeal-second-amendment.html
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