While we wait for the testimony on Benghazi, I found the intentional irony of this vignette from James Taranto too good to pass on without posting:
Antigun nuts are taking aim at moderate Democrats, Politico.com reports:
Ads from the [Michael] Bloomberg-funded Mayors Against Illegal Guns are going up soon in Alaska, Arkansas and North Dakota--three states with Democratic senators who broke with the White House on last month's background checks vote. . . .
It's all got Democrats nervous about keeping their hold on the Senate, if they are under attack from not only Republicans but pro-gun control forces as well.
The Dems are most nervous about Pryor. "Radio spots in Arkansas will target the state's African-American community, 'without which Mark Pryor doesn't have a prayer of getting reelected,' said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns."
Obama and his allies somehow convinced themselves the gun issue would hurt conservatives and Republicans. Instead the left is forming a circular firing squad.
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.
U.S. Constitution, 2nd Amendment
In Heller, the Supreme Court held that individuals had a right under federal law to "keep" modern handguns in their home for protection. In McDonald, the Supreme Court extended held that this right extended to the states. But what about the right to "bear" arms outside the home for self protection?
The test case for that was Illinois, the only state with a blanket ban on concealed carry. In December, Judge Posner, in a case on appeal to the 7th Circuit, wrote that the right to "bear arms" means the right to bear them outside the home. He ordered Illinois to craft a constitutionally acceptable concealed carry law within 180 days.
Illinois asked the entire 7th Circuit to revisit the decision - and today, the 7th Circuit, sitting en banc, denied that request. The Second Amendment Foundation is celebrating. The next stop will likely be the Supreme Court, but unless there is a change to the makeup of the Supreme Court between now and when their decision is issued, if they follow the reasoning of Heller, the Posner decision should be upheld.
The Coalition To Stop Gun Violence (CSGV), has targeted six time Ga Democratic Congressman John Barrow in an attack ad. Collateral damage from the attack ad are integrity, honesty and context.
CSGV's ad is below. They use some very selectively edited footage from one of Barrow's prior campaign ads on the 2nd Amendment, and they use it to tie him to Sandy Hook.
Now for the bits they left out. This is what Barrow actually had to say in his campaign ad:
"We're not here to run campaign ads for John Barrow. We're not his PR team," group spokesman Ladd Everitt told FoxNews.com.
Asked about the omission of the line about stopping a lynching, Everitt said he was "unable to confirm" Barrow's claim about his grandfather. [Anyone want to bet that CSGV did not even think about confirming the 'claim' before releasing the ad?]
"I think most Americans would understand that if you look at the history of lynchings ... there were probably precious few instances where white men with guns prevented lynchings," he said. [Note to Everitt, the NAACP was started by three white Republicans in particular because of their disgust at the lynching of blacks] Everitt added that the point was to highlight Barrow's ties to the NRA and resistance to new calls for gun control.
"We didn't have time to run his entire campaign ad," he said.
This is outrageous.
CSGV is a low rent, slimy act. But here's the real kicker. Its not that the CSGV is quite literally at war with the 2nd Amendment and has advocated disarming all but the military and police. And its not that such a radical organization would use dishonest and deceptive tactics, essentially making the claim that if you advocate gun ownership, you are a proximate cause of the Sandy Hook massacre. One expects that from the left. But the kicker is that CSGV is a creation of the Methodist Church. Moreover, many of its 48 member organizations comprising the "coalition" are religious organizations. For religious organizations to be using these tactics is just appalling.
If you want to register your dissatisfaction with CSGV's parent organization, the UMC's General Board of Church and Society, their president is Bishop Robert Hoshibata. The phone number to their DC office is 202.488.5600. Or feel free to use their online comment form.
I blogged below that the most troublesome aspect of Obama's new anti-gun push was the interplay between doctors' assessments of mental illness and 2nd Amendment Rights. A recent story by NPR shows how difficult it is for the mental health community to assess the likelihood of future violence. NPR does so in the context of addressing a recently enacted NY law that "says mental health professionals must report people they consider likely to do harm. It also gives law enforcement officials the power to take guns from these people " This from NPR:
States aren't likely to prevent many shootings by requiring mental health professionals to report potentially violent patients, psychiatrists and psychologists say.
The approach is part of a gun control law passed in New York yesterday in response to the Newtown, Conn., shooting a month ago. But it's unlikely to work because assessing the risk of violent behavior is difficult, error-prone and not something most mental health professionals are trained to do it, say specialists who deal with violence among the mentally ill.
"We're not likely to catch very many potentially violent people" with laws like the one in New York, says Barry Rosenfeld, a professor of psychology at Fordham University in The Bronx. . . .
Such laws "cast a very large net that will probably restrict a lot of people's behavior unnecessarily," Rosenfeld says. "Maybe we'll prevent an incident or two," he says. . . .
One of the biggest problems with laws like the one in New York is that it asks all mental health professionals to make assessments that are difficult for even those with years of special training, says Rosenfeld.
Rosenfeld says when he is called in to assess a person's risk of violence, "I typically have the benefit of a lengthy face-to-face interview, records on their criminal and mental health history, a tremendous amount of information at my disposal that the typical mental health professional on the fly simply doesn't have."
And even highly trained professionals with lots of information often get it wrong, research shows.
A study of experienced psychiatrists at a major urban psychiatric facility found that they were wrong about which patients would become violent about 30 percent of the time.
That's a much higher error rate than with most medical tests, says Alan Teo, a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan and an author of the study.
One reason even experienced psychiatrists are often wrong is that there are only a few clear signs that a person with a mental illness is likely to act violently, says Steven Hoge, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. These include a history of violence and a current threat to commit violence.
Without either of these, Hoge says, "an accurate assessment of the likelihood of future violence is virtually impossible."
"The biggest risk for gun violence is possession of a gun," says Hoge. "And there's no evidence that the mentally ill possess guns or commit gun violence at any greater rate than the normal population."
Obviously, using "mental illness" as a reason for denying 2nd Amendment rights is far more problematic than many of us non-shrinks initially thought.
Caught between drug gangs, public corruption, and strict anti-gun laws, Mexico has seen dramatic increases in murder and violent crime. The murder rate in Mexico is now five times that in the U.S.
At one time, Mexico's Constitution gave its citizens a right to "keep and bear arms." That protection was neutered four decades ago. Today in Mexico, privately owned firearms are limited to small caliber weapons and private citizens are disarmed in public. Concealed and open carry are both outlawed. Law abiding Mexicans have suffered greatly. But now, this from AP:
Several hundred civilians have taken up arms in two towns in a southwestern Mexico state and are arresting people suspected of crimes and imposing a curfew, . . .
People wearing ski masks or bandanas and carrying small arms this week began manning checkpoints on roads into the municipalities of Ayutla de los Libres and Teconoapa in Guerrero state's Costa Chica area about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of the Pacific resort of Acapulco. Leaders said they were acting against crime and insecurity. . . .
People in the area said about 800 residents were participating in the armed groups acting as unofficial police. The vigilantes ordered a 10 p.m. curfew for the two towns and are looking for suspected criminals. Schools have suspended classes.
In Ayutla, Romualdo Remigio Cantu, one of the coordinators for the civic group Union of Peoples and Social Organizations of Guerrero, said that more than 30 people had been arrested. The detainees are accused of drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping, he said.
A man in a ski mask at one roadblock told reporters that townspeople had to act against criminals.
"They kill, extort, rape. You do not know if they are drug dealers, thugs, who want to grab everything," he said. "We want to return peace and tranquility to the entire population. Only the people can restore order." {emphasis added]
Actually, "only the people" with arms "can restore order." This really is an object lesson in why access to guns is not an archaic nullity, but should be the most basic and universal human right. My hat is off to the people of these towns for their courage in standing up to criminals and their decision to act in defiance of the government who would have them disarmed.
Two final thoughts. One, somebody ought to suggest to Holder that if he is going to unilaterally arm subsets of the Mexican population, he ought to start with these civilians, not the Mexican drug gangs raping, pillaging and killing them. Two, as to access to guns for the law abiding, somehow that doesn't seem to be on the UN's agenda. Indeed, I invite you to read the UN Office For Disarmament Affairs page on the "scourge" of "small arms." One term you will not find - "self defense." And I bet that, in the future, you will you never find reference on that page to the Union of Peoples and Social Organizations of Guerrero.
Two very good posts make the argument that "gun control" is not the "national conversation" we need to be having in the wake of Sandy Hook. At the American Thinker, Randall Hoven makes the point that we are in the midst of declining rates of crime, even as gun ownership in the U.S. has been liberalized in a number of states. Addressing FBI crime statistics, he notes:
. . . the murder rate [in the U.S.] is historically low and is already trending downward. In fact, the murder rate in 2011 was the lowest since 1961: 4.7 murders per 100,000 people. In only 5 years since 1910 has it been lower: 1955-59, when it was only slightly lower at 4.5 or 4.6. . . .
Hoven compares our murder rate against those of Europe. He notes that the U.S. murder rate is not high in comparison to Europe as whole. Moreover, Hoven the decidedly not politically correct fact that when you parse the U.S. murder rate, it shows that over half of all murders are committed by blacks, even though they constitute only 13.6% of the population. Discount for that fact, and the murder rate in the U.S. drops to 2.6 per 100,000 of population, a rate in line with Western European nations. This suggests that any honest conversation about gun violence in our nation would needs to begin with addressing problems unique to blacks in our nation. Lastly, Hoven notes:
[T]here is no evidence here that the availability of guns leads to more murders. Two of the most heavily armed countries, Finland and Switzerland, have murder rates of 2.2 and 0.7, among the lowest in the world. On the other hand, every country with a murder rate at least 5 times greater than the U.S.'s has at least 5 times fewer firearms per person than the U.S.
Bookworm Room takes note of these numbers, and then looks beyond the murder rate to total violent crime statistics, where the most disarmed societies experience are some of the most violent. Ultimately, she concludes:
[I]t’s very hard to avoid looking at the above data (fewer guns and more crime versus more guns and less crime) without coming to the conclusion that, in a nominally Judeo-Christian society with a rule of law, guns add to, rather than subtract from, public safety.
As both Bookworm Room and Mr. Hoven point out, in light of the above, talk of greater restriction on gun ownership is not the conversation we need to be having. As Bookworm Rooms adds:
Do we want to debate gun control, which is the current nomenclature of choice, or do we want to debate lessening violence overall? The former discussion presupposes government restrictions on gun ownership, with the only question being how much restriction the government can and should impose. The latter discussion, however, forces people to confront the fact that the best way to lessen violence would be to arm more law-abiding citizens, rather than to leave guns as the exclusive preserve of the criminal and the insane.
I would add that this should be the last time we have a "gun control" conversation. Unless something happens to change the makeup of the Supreme Court between now and 2016, or unless John Roberts decides to make more political, rather than judicial decisions, the major push of the "gun control" crowd should be foreclosed, assuming the Court continues the logic of its seminal 2nd Amendment decision, Heller.
In the wake of Sandy Hook, the left is pretending that the 2nd Amendment is a nullity. Just the other day, as NY's Gov. Cuomo announced sweeping new restrictions on gun ownership in his state, he attempted to justify it by distinguishing his restrictions from anything that would impact on hunting. But the Supreme Court, in Heller, ignored hunting. As the Court made crystal clear, the 2nd Amendment's purpose, distilled to the modern era, is to allow individuals to defend themselves against “public and private violence.”
With that in mind, when you hear a primal scream from the left that “assault weapons” are only meant for killing people, the correct response ought to be . . . “and your point is?” When one is forced to defend against "public or private violence" with a weapon, the idea is to end the threat as soon as possible. THAT is precisely within the ambit of the 2nd Amendment. And indeed, a strong case can be made that there is no more family friendly weapon for effective self defense in the home than an AR15.
Moreover, the Heller decision directly addresses what type of weapons are within the ambit of the 2nd Amendment. Heller explicitly gave its approval to continuing restrictions on machine guns and sawed off shot guns. But as to other weapons, Scalia characterized the argument that the 2nd Amendment applied only to 18th century weapons as “bordering on frivolous.” As he explained,
Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, . . ., and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, . . ., , the Second Amendment extends, prima facie,to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”
Given that semi-automatic weapons have been around in the U.S. for over a century – and given that the AR15 has been in civilian circulation for half a century – it is questionable indeed whether any limitation on ownership of semi-automatic “assault rifles” would be held constitutional by the SCT.
Lastly, as to states that give government officials the power to subjectively deny concealed carry permits for reasons other than a criminal background or mental illness, we await a future Supreme Court decision. The operative language of the 2nd Amendment gives a right to “keep and bear arms.” As the Heller decision explained, to ”bear,” in 18th century parlance, meant to “carry.” Being forced to leave your weapon at home, thus limiting your ability to defend outside of the home, conflicts with both the language and intent of the 2nd Amendment. This surely points to the fact that “may carry” laws are likely to be held unconstitutional.
We do need to have a conversation about violent crime. And it needs to be one that includes all the relevant facts, whether politically correct or not. Hopefully, we will soon arrive at the point where the contours of the 2nd Amendment are fleshed out, and a tragedy like Sandy Hook serves as an impetus and oppurtunity to discuss actual solutions to such problems, not as an opportunity to be exploited by a ghoulish far left bent on making of the 2nd Amendment a nullity.
“If you look at every one of the tragic events that have attracted so much attention, it’s hard to be able to pinpoint what you could have done to assure it wouldn’t have happened."
Every American shares the horror at what happened at Sandy Hook. That said, the far left has embraced Sandy Hook as an opening to try and pass all of the gun control legislation they can dream up. Yet, as the quote from Biden shows, even the far left acknowledges that their "solutions" are disconnected from anything that would have stopped the Sandy Hook massacre. Just to review:
- The shooter didn't buy his weapon, he stole it. There have been a plethora of plans floated for more background checks and more paperwork in the wake of Sandy Hook, none of which would have stopped the massacre.
- The Sandy Hook shooter used a .223 Bushmaster "assault rifle" to kill some or all of his victims. But the reality is that he had 20 minutes of free fire time once he entered the school and before police arrived. He could have used any type of fire to accomplish his carnage. Banning "assault rifles" would not have stopped Sandy Hook.
- Accepting the left's claim that "assault rifles" serve only one purpose - to kill people - that is a feature, not a bug. Just what does the far left think that the 2nd Amendment protects? Using weapons for skeet shooting? For hunting rabbits? No,
the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is, per the Supreme Court, to allow people to keep and bears arms in order to protect against "public and private violence." The AR15 is perhaps the most viable weapon for that purpose - especially for home defense and use by women, teens and people of limited strength. It is a weapon with virtually no recoil, it fires a bullet at very high velocity, thus having having "stopping power" in respect to criminals, and it can hold enough rounds in its magazine to be useful against multiple targets threatening violence.
- Expanding "gun free zones" or penalties for possessing fire arms inside or in the vicinity of schools is the biggest joke of all. One, it merely insures that the law abiding are disarmed for the criminals who, surprisingly enough, are not deterred by the fact that guns are outlawed there. "Gun free zones" only invite carnage. Two, the reality is that the "gun free zone" legislation is nothing more than a de facto ban on gun ownership among the law abiding, particularly in most cities. So, for example, if you are prevented by law from having a firearm within a thousand meters of a school, that would effectively act to disarm the majority of people living in most cities.
- The single "solution" to Sandy Hook, doing away with gun free zones as a matter of law and allowing some teachers and staff to carry concealed weapons, subject to reasonable requirements for training and certification, does not seem to be even within the realm of Biden's task force.
- Limiting "high capacity magazines" has nothing to do with stopping what happened at Sandy Hook. One, magazines are simple to exchange - it takes only a second. It is not something that will slow down a criminal bent on firing more than ten rounds. Two, "high capacity magazines" are problematic, but for wholly practical reasons - they have a tendency to jam. Indeed, in the infantry, we never used anything over a 20 round magazine for our M16's for precisely that reason. The only reason for the left to fixate on magazine capacity is as a backdoor to outlawing weapons that are able to take "high capacity" magazines. Lastly, when it comes to self defense, unless someone on the left can assure me that my family will never be put in a position where their safety depends on firing more than ten rounds, then limiting magazine capacity is a restriction on my right to self defense.
- The only thing that even remotely comes close to addressing the causes of Sandy Hook have been some superficial discussions of mental illness. We will have to see what Biden's task force proposes, but I have zero trust in the left to do anything other than use this as a backdoor to gun control. I could envision the left trying to deny gun permits by law to anyone who ever visited a psychiatrist or whoever was once diagnosed with depression and put on anti-depressants. What we have not heard from Biden any serious discussion of allowing people with severe mental illness to be involuntarily institutionalized for evaluation and treatment.
So there you have it. What Biden will ultimately propose, we will have to wait until next week to find out. But you can be sure of one thing - it would not have stopped Sandy Hook, nor will it stop the next mass murder. The only thing that will stop that is if there is a sane person with a gun who fortuitously happens to be at the right place at the right time when the next mass murder is attempted.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein will be introducing 'gun control' legislation in January. She is using the excuse of Sandy Hook to introduce legislation that is jaw dropping in its breadth. I have yet to read the text of the bill, but the write up Feinstein provides describes vast regulation of weapons of all sorts. Indeed, it would appear to reach virtually all semi-automatic rifles and hand-guns, since virtually all use detachable magazines.
Bans the sale, transfer, importation, or manufacturing of:
120 specifically-named firearms
Certain other semiautomatic rifles, handguns, shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and have one military characteristic
Semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds
Strengthens the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban and various state bans by:
Moving from a 2-characteristic test to a 1-characteristic test
Eliminating the easy-to-remove bayonet mounts and flash suppressors from the characteristics test
Banning firearms with “thumbhole stocks” and “bullet buttons” to address attempts to “work around” prior bans
Bans large-capacity ammunition feeding devices capable of accepting more than 10 rounds.
Protects legitimate hunters and the rights of existing gun owners by:
Grandfathering weapons legally possessed on the date of enactment
Exempting over 900 specifically-named weapons used for hunting or sporting purposes and
Exempting antique, manually-operated, and permanently disabled weapons
Requires that grandfathered weapons be registered under the National Firearms Act, to include:
Background check of owner and any transferee;
Type and serial number of the firearm;
Positive identification, including photograph and fingerprint;
Certification from local law enforcement of identity and that possession would not violate State or local law; and
Dedicated funding for ATF to implement registration
I have recently concluded that our modern left is every bit as totalitarian as were Stalin and Mao, the only difference being that they are constrained to acting incrementally in our nation. I see now that I was wrong. Feinstein's rather incredible attempt to disarm the law abiding is anything but incremental.
And do note the extreme irony. Feinstein is promoting this as a response to Sandy Hook. The shooter in that massacre had 20 minutes of free fire time once in the "gun free zone" and before police arrived. He could have used virtually any weapon still allowed under Feinstein's regulation to accomplish the same amount of carnage. This isn't legislation responsive to Sandy Hook, it's legislation solely aimed at the law abiding.
The slaughter at Sandy Hook has unleashed the left, who see it as an opportunity to disarm the law abiding. From David Gregory today, we get a mocking diatribe against the suggestion that every school have armed guards - even as he sends his children to an elite private school where, in fact, his children are protected by armed guards. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a man protected 24 hours a day by armed security, has talked about confiscating assault weapons from the people of his state. And then there is the NYT editorial board, who opine today on "the scourge of concealed weapons."
Scourge?
Your welcome to read through the NYT's idiocy. Concealed carry is only implicated in the Sandy Hook massacre in as much as the school was a "gun free" zone where none of the staff were allowed a weapon. That gave the shooter 20 minutes of free fire time once he entered the school to accomplish his carnage. He could have done it with a couple of muskets in that amount of time. All of those critical relevant facts are simply ignored by the NTY.
So what is it that the NYT's want? They certainly don't hide it. The NYT editorial board is using Sandy Hook to request that Obama use federal law to trump those 39 states that either have laws allowing concealed carry without permit (4) or those with "shall issue" permitting (35). They want concealed carry permits to be rarely, if ever issued. They want a re-institution of the scary looking weapons assault weapons ban. And lastly, they want Obama to greatly expand the "gun free zones" so as to include "public places like parks, schools and churches."
Though we still await further Supreme Court decisions, if the right to "keep and bear arms" means anything in terms of self defense, then it means that the right to possess arms in defense of self and others travels with the person. It means they should not be unilaterally disarmed by the designation of free fire gun free zones. It means that all people not specifically disqualified, such as by prior criminal record, should be allowed concealed carry. And it means that people need to have access to weapons that would be effective against a tyrannical state actor - and that means at least semi-automatic rifles.
The left's reaction to Sandy Hook is anything but a measured one. They are unhinged and unleased. For the left, the 2nd Amendment simply does not exist, and the Heller decision is to be devoutly ignored. Sandy Hook is nothing more than an excuse for them to stop people from being armed. Guns are simply too dangerous to be allowed in the possession of the unwashed masses, and every trick that can be used to disarm them should be used. The mind numbing hypocrisy of those calling for disarmament is surreal.
Are you considering backing gun control laws? Do you think that because you may not own a gun, the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment don't matter?
CONSIDER:
- In 1929 the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, approximately 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
- In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915-1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
- Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and others, who were unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
- China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
- Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
- Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
- Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million "educated" people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
That places total victims who lost their lives because of gun control at approximately 56 million in the last century. Since we should learn from the mistakes of history, the next time someone talks in favor of gun control, find out which group of citizens they wish to have exterminated. . . .
Put simply, gun control is a means of insuring that targeted populations cannot defend themselves against government oppression. Indeed, in our nation, gun control started in states controlled by Democrats as a means of insuring that the black population would not be armed.
At the police station, dispatchers began to take calls from inside the school. Authorities say the first emergency call about the shooting came in at "approximately" 9:30 a.m.
"Sandy Hook school. Caller is indicating she thinks someone is shooting in the building," a dispatcher told fire and medical personnel, according to 911 tapes.
Police and other first responders arrived on scene about 20 minutes after the first calls.
Police report that no law enforcement officers discharged their weapons at any point.
The gunman took his own life, police said. He took out a handgun and shot himself in a classroom as law enforcement officers approached, officials said.
Twenty students, ages 6 and 7, and six adults were killed at the school.
The murder of 26 students and teachers at Sandy Hook is both a massacre and a tragedy. The fact that the murderer met no armed resistance during the 20 minutes of his massacre is an obscenity.
The solution to this problem seems pretty simple. The only way to stop a person with a gun is another person with a gun at the time and place of the crime - and, as former police officer Mike McDaniel writes at PJM, because of response times, that will rarely, if ever, be a member of the police. Allowing school staff and teachers to be trained and authorized to carry concealed weapons, as already occurring in some places and called for in others, is the "school solution."
But the left wants our nation disarmed. They do not trust anyone with a gun - unless, of course, its the people directly providing security for them. So, for them, the solution is to take more guns away from the law abiding and designating more areas free fire gun free zones.
Links:
- Ace of Spades: Penn & Teller On Gun Control
- Instapundit: The questions to ask to start the debate on gun control . . .
Had there been a person at Sandy Hook with a concealed carry permit, could this mass murder have been stopped, in whole or in part? As Bookworm Room points out, the police response to the tragedy was quick, but when seconds counted, they got there in minutes - in time to take stock of the carnage, not to stop it.
As Prof. Reynolds explained in his column linked above:
. . . One of the interesting characteristics of mass shootings is that they generally occur in places where firearms are banned: malls, schools, etc. That was the finding of a famous 1999 study by John Lott of the University of Maryland and William Landes of the University of Chicago, and it appears to have been borne out by experience since then as well.
In a way, this is no surprise. If there's someone present with a gun when a mass shooting begins, the shooter is likely to be shot himself. And, in fact, many mass shootings — from the high school shooting by Luke Woodham in Pearl, Miss., to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo., where an armed volunteer shot the attacker — have been terminated when someone retrieved a gun from a car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.
Policies making areas "gun free" provide a sense of safety to those who engage in magical thinking, but in practice, of course, killers aren't stopped by gun-free zones. As always, it's the honest people — the very ones you want to be armed — who tend to obey the law.
We don't need more gun control, we need laws that insure that responsible, law abiding people have access to guns both in and outside their home. Update: Interestingly enough, Michigan just passed a new law to expand concealed carry permits and to eliminate most so called "gun free zones," including at schools. And we need to see some of those institutions promulgating "gun free zones" sued for disarming the very people who could have stopped such senseless violence.
But that aside, it also appears, as is often the case in such mass murders, that the perpetrator may have been mentally ill. What this should ignite is not a “national conversation” on gun control, but a national conversation on our policies towards individuals with mental disorders when people around them have reason to suspect they might be or become violent. Right now, thanks to the past five decades of work by the ACLU and others, there is next to nothing that can be done to institutionalize such individuals and get them help. That is the string that ties together the last several high profile mass murders that come immediately to my mind – Giffords, the Colorado Cinema, and now, from early reports, Sandy Hook.
Update: Jeff Goldberg, writing at the Atlantic, makes the same points I make above, about why there was no one in the school with a weapon to stop the slaughter and a need to reexamine how we treat the dangerous mentally ill.
Update: Bookworm Room has put up a great post on responding to the many myths the left uses to justify their calls for gun control.
Update: Law Prof. Eugene Volokh posed a question for his readers that, in sum, asks what objection they would have, if any, to the teachers or staff in schools having concealed carry permits. The moaning and braying in the comments section from the left side of the aisle is a bit depressing actually. The negative comments almost uniformly show a distrust of private, law abiding citizens being armed while, at the same time, ignoring the elephant in the room, that such an individual might have been able to end the slaughter.
Update: From American Digest - Meanwhile, at Elementary School in Israel . . .
There are numerous fascinating posts out over the past few days that I have wanted to blog but have just run out of time. Here they are:
PJM: Michael Ledeen provides a reminder - totalitarianism must win out or be defeated. There is no middle ground. He puts it in terms of Iran, but I think it equally as applicable to the insane idea of negotiating with the Taliban.
That’s no doubt the “deep down” reason why Obama worked so hard — indeed is still secretly working hard — to get his version of the Hitler/Stalin pact with Iran. Somebody ought to remind Obama how that great triumph of totalitarian diplomacy worked out for the two of them.
Big Lizards has some additional cogent thoughts on the Obama decision to negotiate with the Taliban.
NRO: Real capitalism exists only in Communist China - - - well, the special district of Hong Kong, where limited government, a laughably simple tax code, and no major regulatory regime to speak of stand in direct contrast to the U.S. How would we like to see Hong Kong's near 6% growth this year.
The Daily Gator: A rogues gallery of the Top Ten Lunatic Fringe Ron Paul Supporters. Paul almost makes Obama's choice of associations look benign.
PJM: Spengler puts "private equity and creative destruction" into context, taking Gingrich and Perry rightfully to task. Theirs is an attack from the left on capitalism - and I say that as one who would much prefer to see Gingrich in the White House than Romney:
Want to see what America would look like without private equity? Move to Detroit and contemplate the ruins of a city ruined by the placid conformity of auto industry executives. The economic impact of the corporate takeover business can’t be measured by the outcome of takeovers as such. Private equity transformed the way American business thought about the world.
Across The Fence: Mark Meckler, of Tea Party fame, discusses his arrest in NYC for possession of a firearm (unloaded, in a case in his luggage, for which he had a valid permit) after he tried to declare it before boarding a plane at LaGuardia airport. NYC ultimately dropped the charges, but is refusing now to return his gun. It is all a Constitutional travesty.
PJM: Kevin Martin discusses the dissatisfaction of progressive blacks with Obama
Belafonte and others would be hard pressed to find anyone in the black community who could claim they are better off today than they were 3 years ago.
That goes hand in glove with my post the other day, that now is the time for conservatives to make a real push for the black vote. If we can convince 1 in 10 of the reality - that "on the two most important issues facing blacks today, jobs and education, their best hopes lay with the right," then the Democrats will be put in dire straits.
NRO: Five Muslims have been arrested in the UK and charged with violating a new hate speech law for stating in a leaflet that gays will go to hell and should receive the death penalty.
The passage of the law, and its first use this week, is the continuation of a worrying trend in the United Kingdom. Laws governing thought and speech, rather than deed, are becoming commonplace. . . . Worse, it cripples free expression and leaves people looking over their shoulders.
The UK, from which the concept of freedom of speech springs, has taken a worrying turn against it since the 1980's - to the extent that I find myself today, for the first time, coming down on the side of the radical Muzzies.
Ironic Surrealism: Obnoxious, hypocritical, outrageous . . . . are just a few of the adjectives one could quite legitimately apply to the DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who has once again tried to blame the Tea Party for the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. What a detestable woman.
Got Medieval: If you like the legend of King Arthur, GM provides some of the fascinating backstory of the legend's author, Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Woman Honor Thyself: Gender confusion [shiver] is being foisted on us by "lefties and Hollywood bozos:"
The underlying and not so subtle aim is to blur and haze the line between men and womens’wear, thus blurring the line between men and women period.
The left is repeated trotting out two shibboleths to justify their blood libel that the right has created a climate of hate that set the stage for Jared Loughner's mass murder in Arizona. The first, Palin's map, has been addressed ad inifitum. That has mostly been dropped since it has been shown that the left did the same thing with maps, bull's eyeing targets for election contests. The second, however, Sharon Angle's reference to a "Second Amendment solution," is now appearing more and more as the justification for the left's scurrilous attacks
So what precisely did Ms. Angle say that has the left all atwitter? She was asked about the Second Amendment in a radio interview several months ago.
Angle: I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who's in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical...
Manders: If we needed it at any time in history, it might be right now.
Angle: Well it's to defend ourselves. And you know, I'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.
"You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason, and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said, it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years," Angle said. "I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, my goodness, what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you, the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."
So let's break that down. First, did she acurately describe the scope and history of the Second Amendment in both interviews? Going to the Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, that answer is decidedly yes. As the discussion of the history of the Second Amendment in that case makes clear, the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, and it was a right given in part in order to protect against tyrannical government.
The second portion of Ms. Angle's first statement was inartful at best, but is there anyone who thinks she was calling for revolt in the event she was not elected? Or did she mean that there is no need for armed rebellion so long as we have recourse to the ballot box? Contrast that with Rep. Kanjorski (D-Pa), who actually did call for the outright execution of a Republican - "put him up against a wall and shoot him" - last year.
In the second interview, is there anyone who thinks that she was advocating the murder of Harry Reid? Contrast that with, for but one example, the books and movies during the Bush years discussing his actual assassination.
Sharron Angle was the Republican version of Joe Biden - a cringe worthy gaffe-o-matic. But, to school my left wing readers, there is huge gulf between inartful gaffes and calls for outright assassination.
That said, let me reiterate Ms. Angles statement that a purpose of the Second Amendment was to protect against a tyrannical government. Despite what Ezra Klein may think, the fact that the document is over 200 years old does not vitiate in the least that purpose, embodied in this quote from Thomas Jefferson:
When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
I can see why the left is upset. That must be a nagging thought for a government that has moved our country far to the left against the will of the people and is now poised to further subvert our democracy by governing through regulatory bureaucracies, having them accrete and wield power that our elected representatives in Congress have refused to authorize. That is a bastardization of our republican form of government and, indeed, does move us incrementally closer to tyranny. I don't think anyone on the left thinks Sharron Angle was advocating armed rebellion, but I do think it struck a cord somewhere deep in the left's psyche. And well it should have.
That said, as Ms. Angle implied, our first, second, third, and next to last resort is to the ballot box. The penultimate question is not which side wins the election, but that the ballot be fair and free, and that the democratic / republican process be fully respected.
Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.
Sir George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries, 1803
One can hardly argue with the centuries old observation of Sir George Tucker set down in the first American edition of Blackstone's Commentaries on the law. An unarmed populace is subject to brutality and repression from a tyrannical government. The picture of an unarmed youth shot by basij in Iran speaks a thousand words on the topic.
Iran required gun owners to register their weapons in the late 1970's and then banned gun ownership, as opposition to the Shah coallesced. Iran's theocracy has kept that ban in place. As we watch the people in Iran, disarmed, fall to the predations of armed thugs and riot police of the theocracy, I wonder if we should not be arguing that the right to keep and bear arms should pursued as an international human right.
It is the most repressive regimes that seek to ban private ownership of weapons - and the UN. This from Janet Ellen Levy writing in the American Thinker two years ago:
In the international arena, the United Nations is at the forefront of a global movement to limit worldwide gun production and eliminate private firearms ownership. Total disarmament of civilian populations is the U.N. goal. For the past five years, the United Nations has convened an annual, international gun control summit to discuss strategies to forestall the "proliferation of small arms and light weapons." Participating countries have included Iran, China, Algeria, Nigeria and Bangladesh, among others, as well as anti-firearms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which have pressured governments worldwide to eliminate civilian gun ownership.
The images of today from Iran should hammer home why the more repressive the government, the more the push on their part to disarm their populace. And it should equally hammer home the stark need for people to have an absolute right to own weapons. As James Madison famously said "People should not be afraid of their government. Government should be afraid of their people." It seems to me that "human rights" begins and ends with that observation.
If you think the issue of the Second Amendment and gun rights went away with the Supreme Court decision in Heller, you are sorely mistaken. The issue has just bloomed into what will shortly become a full-scale battle to determine the contours of the Second Amendment right. Outside of the justices sitting on the Supreme Court, the individual who will most effect how that right will be interpreted will be our next President. With that in mind, how would a President Obama effect the Second Amendment? _________________________________________________
The Supreme Court decided in Heller that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. While a momentous decision, it was also a very limited one. All Heller decided was that anyone living on federally administered land has an absolute right to keep a pistol, rifle or shotgun in their home and that they have an absolute right to keep the firearm loaded and ready to fire. We also know that some level of restriction on both gun ownership - i.e., who may own them - and the type of firearm that may be owned – e.g., limits on machine gun and short barrel shotguns – are permissible limitations on the right. Everything else about the Second Amendment awaits future litigation.
The phrase "everything else" includes, for example, the seminal issue of whether states can enact a complete ban on gun ownership, either directly or indirectly. As explained here, Heller did not decide that issue. If the Second Amendment does not apply to the states, then states are free to enact any restrictions they want on gun ownership. Further, gun-control advocates, localities, states and even the federal government can enact an endless variety of gun control restrictions in the wake of Heller in an attempt to severely limit the Second Amendment right to the point that it becomes a nullity. [Update: D.C. is already attempting to limitHeller by maintaining a ban on all semi-automatic pistols, the most popular type of handgun in the U.S.] The next President’s Justice Department will also have a key role to play in the Supreme Court's hearing of Second Amendment litigation, either in support or in opposition to gun rights.
In light of this, where Obama stands both on the judiciary and the Second Amendment are of critical importance, The most important is of course the type of judges Obama would appoint to the Supreme Court. We saw in Heller four activist liberal justices tie themselves in knots trying to make the argument that the right to keep and bear arms - an individual right at inception - into a collective right two hundred plus years later, based on a balancing test of today's equities while the two most junior Supreme Court Justices, Roberts and Alito, both joined the majority decision.
Obama joined a handful of the most liberal Senators to oppose the appointments of both Judges Alito and Roberts on ideological grounds. A President Obama would appoint judges who resemble the dissenters in Heller. And after the Boumediene decision, anyone who believes the activist wing of the Supreme Court see themselves as restrained by either original intent or precedent is partaking of fantasy. There can be no question that an activist majority on the Supreme Court would limit, if not outright emasculate the Second Amendment right. It is likely a President Obama would have at least one and as many as three Supreme Court appointments (and a bevy of appeals courts appointments). One of those could well tip the balance of the Court, giving the activist wing of the Court an outright majority.
Beyond judges, there is the still important question of how a President Obama would approach Second Amendment rights. Both through the legislation he would approve and the positions he would have the Justice Dept. take in litigation, he would play a direct role in shaping the contours of the Second Amendment. If you listen to Obama in the wake of Heller, the answer is that his views are the same as McCain's and, indeed, the same as what was expressed by Justice Scalia in the Supreme Court opinion, District of Columbia v. Heller. That bald assertion stands in near total opposition to Obama's record and prior pronouncements.
Obama’s animus towards an individual right to own guns and to use them in self defense is well documented. As a threshold matter, DC’s draconian gun laws, just overturned in Heller as violating an individual right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment, are a mirror image of the law in Chicago. Both have an indirect ban on handguns and require guns legally kept in the home to be rendered non-functional. Yet after Obama became a state Senator representing a Chicago district, he never proposed anything that would liberalize Chicago’s laws nor the gun laws in the state of Illinois. To the contrary, Obama’s proposals would have added onerous restrictions and his votes were strongly against any provision that would have allowed law abiding individuals to protect themselves with guns.
In 1994, while Obama was still in a private legal practice, he accepted appointment as a director on the board of the Joyce Foundation, a position he held from 1994 through 2002. According to No Quarter, "the NRA calls the Joyce Foundation an activist foundation whose ‘shadowy web of huge donations’ leads ‘straight to puppet strings that control the agenda of gun ban groups.’"
According to the the NRO, during Obama’s tenure on the Joyce Foundation, they funded the Violence Policy Center for a sum total of $15 million. The Violence Policy Center "touts themselves as "the most aggressive group in the gun control movement" and actively campaigned for a national ban on handguns. The Joyce Foundation also funded the pro-gun control Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research with over a $1.2 million. That organization argued that "guns in the home were more dangerous than protective" and primarily acted in "litigation designed to change the way guns are designed, marketed, distributed, and sold."
Then in 1996, when Obama was first running for office as an Illinois State Senator for Chicago’s Tenth District, an influential local political organization asked Obama to complete a survey on his positions as an integral part of their process to determine which candidate to endorse. The completed survey ascribed to Obama a series of very far left positions on a variety of hot button issues, one of which was support for a total ban on handguns. After the survey came to light, Obama’s aides said he "never saw or approved" the questionnaire. They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who "unintentionally mischaracterize[d] his position." Indeed, Obama today claim’s that he has never supported a total ban on handguns.
But then additional facts emerged. Obama, it turned out, had met with the organization and was interviewed directly upon the basis of his answers to the survey. Further, the day after the interview, Obama filed an amended survey with hand-written comments in the margins. Once this came to light, according to the Politico, "[t]hrough an aide, Obama, . . . did not dispute that the handwriting was his. But he contended it doesn’t prove he completed, approved — or even read — the latter questionnaire." Several members of the local political organization that accepted the questionarie call Obama’s current claims "unbelievable."
Then in the April debates, Obama not only disclaimed any knowledge of the answers on which he was quizzed, but even claimed that the handwriting wasn’t his on the amended survey. This seems even more unbelievable under the circumstances. And indeed, according to Factcheck.org, it is Obama’s handwriting on the document, though it is not precisely clear how they made that determination. Though this issue now trancends gun rights and goes directly to Obama's honesty and character - and thus his fitness to be President - the MSM seems distinctly uninterested.
Obama claims he believes in the Second Amendment as an individual right, but with room for "common sense" laws. Obama gave us an idea of what he considers "common sense" laws in 1999, when he proposed an incredibly restrictive plan for anti-gun legislation at the state and federal level that would have made the D..C. laws just overturned look as if they had been crafted by the NRA. The following article, reprinted at the Volokh Conspiracy, appeared in the Dec. 13, 1999 edition of The Chicago Defender:
Sweeping federal gun control legislation proposed by Sen. Barack Obama (D-13th) would increase the penalties on gun runners who are flooding Chicago's streets with illegal weapons. . . .
Obama outlined his anti-gun plan . . . Obama is proposing to make it a felony for a gun owner whose firearm was stolen from his residence which causes harm to another person if that weapon was not securely stored in that home.
He's proposing restricting gun purchases to one weapon a month and banning the sale of firearms at gun shows except for "antique" weapons. Obama is also proposing increasing the licensing fee to obtain a federal firearms license.
He's also seeking a ban on police agencies from reselling their used weapons even if those funds are used to buy more state-of-the-art weapons for their agencies. Obama wants only those over 21 who've passed a basic course to be able to buy or own a firearm.
He's proposing that all federally licensed gun dealers sell firearms in a storefront and not from their homes while banning their business from being within five miles of a school or a park. He's also banning the sale of 'junk" handguns like the popular Saturday Night Specials.
Obama is . . . also asking that gun manufacturers be required to develop safety measures that permit only the original owner of the firearm to operate the weapon purchased.
. . . Obama is also seeking to increase the federal taxes by 500 percent on the sale of firearms, ammunition [sic] -- weapons he says are most commonly used in firearm deaths.
Some of the provisions discussed above would make it prohibitive to own a firearm – and essentially impossible to buy one. Anyone who faced a felony with over a year in jail for a stolen firearm would logically have to keep the gun under lock and key at all times, assuming one was willing face such severe criminal penalties to own a gun in the first place. The costs Obama would add to gun ownership and the banning of lower priced "junk" handguns would effectively leave only the financially well to do able to own a weapon. The technology Obama wants on the gun raises its own problems, including for weapons available inside homes for any family member to access in an emergency and the ability to resell the weapons. But the most onerous is last. His call for a federal law limiting sales to storefront businesses and banning all firearms sells from "any gun store within five miles of a school or park . . . would eliminate gun stores from almost the entire inhabited portion of the United States." I think it safe to say that inability to legally buy a handgun in the U.S. would likely serve as a significant narrowing of the Second Amendment right Obama claims to believe in so fervently in the wake of the Heller decision.
Although 40 states currently allow concealed carry permits, Obama "told the Chicago Tribune in 2004 that he favored a national ban" on such permits. He did so on the basis that allowing states to issue concealed carry permits threaten residents of Illinois, even though the permits are only valid in the state of issue.
Interestingly enough, Obama voted to allow concealed carry permits in one instance – for retired Illinois police officers. Not to suggest that Obama would alter his position if there were political gains to be had, but his vote happened to come during the period in which "Obama was battling with his GOP opponent to win the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police."
And Obama does not see self-defense as a reasonable justification for carrying handguns. In 2001, as a state senator, Mr. Obama voted against allowing people who had received injunctive domestic violence protective orders dispensation to carry handguns for protection. It is not clear why he objected to law abiding people facing a threat of violence from obtaining a hand gun permit for self-protection. But his subsequent vote in the case of Hale DeMar make clear he sees state control of guns as more important than any individual right to own weapons and use them for self defense.
In 2003, someone broke into the home of Hale DeMar in Wilmette, Illinois. DeMar used a handgun – banned from the locality – to defend his family. DeMar was prosecuted by the town for this offense. A bill was introduced into the Illinois Senate in response that would have given citizens "a legal defense against prosecution for violating a local handgun ban if they actually used the firearm for lawful self-defense on their own property." Obama was one a handful of Democratic Senators to vote against that bill, which passed overwhelmingly in 2004 despite Obama’s opposition.
In 2004, while running for the U.S. Senate, Obama stated that he was in favor of renewing the assault weapons ban on over 200 different types of guns instituted during the Clinton Presidency. He said "I believe we need to renew -- not roll back -- this common sense gun law."
As a U.S. Senator, in 2005, Obama voted against Senate Bill 397 that would have protected gun manufacturers and stores that sell firearms from law suits by cities and states because of gun crime arising solely out of the misuse of their product.
Obama’s sole vote in support of the right of gun owners came in the wake of Katrina, when police and federal agents were breaking into the homes of law abiding citizens to confiscate their weapons. Obama joined with the vast majority of the Senate in voting for a bill to prohibit federal agents from confiscating firearms during a declared state of emergency.
While most of the above has stayed well out of the pages of the MSM, Obama has repeatedly been questioned on whether he supported the D.C. law restricting gun ownership and usage – which Obama clearly does and far more. Obama has changed his publicly stated position from "yes" to "never" to "I don’t know" and back again, all within the space of several months, and all without ever being challenged on his responses.
In November, when his campaign was asked about Obama's position on gun control and the D.C. ban on handguns, the campaign responded that Mr. Obama thought the D.C. gun laws constitutional. No correction was issued until seven months later when, immediately after the Heller decision was released, Obama claimed that he always had believed the opposite. As Charles Krauthammer wryly observed:
Last week, when the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, Obama immediately declared that he agreed with the decision. This is after his campaign explicitly told the Chicago Tribune last November that he believes the D.C. gun ban is constitutional.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton explains the inexplicable by calling the November -- i.e., the primary season -- statement "inartful." Which suggests a first entry in the Obamaworld dictionary -- "Inartful: clear and straightforward, lacking the artistry that allows subsequent self-refutation and denial."
Q: You said recently, "I have no intention of taking away folks' guns." But you support the D.C. handgun ban, and you've said that it's constitutional. How do you reconcile those two positions?
A: . . . Because I think we have two conflicting traditions in this country. I think it's important for us to recognize that we've got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of law-abiding citizens use it for hunting, for sportsmanship, and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measure that I think respect the Second Amendment and people's traditions.
The problem is of course that, while Obama pays lip service to the Second Amendment, those "reasonable, thoughtful gun control measures" that Obama has supported severely restrict lawful gun ownership. They are inconsistent with a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self defense.
According to a February 15, 2008 AP article, "[a]t his news conference, [Obama] voiced support for the District of Columbia's ban on handguns"
During the April 16, 2008 Democratic debate, Obama was asked about the D.C. gun law and whether he saw it as "consistent with an individual's right to bear arms?" Obama, the Constitutional law Professor, sidestepped the specific issue of the D.C. gun law – despite the fact that D.C.’s law is, in all relevant respects the same as Chicago’s. He said that he could not take a position because he had not read the briefs, and then added:
"As a general principle, I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms. But just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right, in the same way that we have a right to private property but local governments can establish zoning ordinances that determine how you can use it. "
And Obama’s latest pronouncement on the Supreme Court decision in Heller has been that the decision mirrors what has always been his own deeply felt beliefs. In an article ": "Obama clarifies position on D.C. gun ban", Obama is quoted as saying:
"What I said was that I believe Second Amendment as being an individual right and have said that consistently. I also think that individual right is constrained by the rights of the community to maintain issues with public safety. I don't think those two principles are contradictory and in fact what I've been saying consistently is what the Supreme Court essentially said today."
Obama's big lie there is claiming that what he believes should be the law is what the Heller Court decided. As to his lie about supporting the D.C. law, with special thanks to Hot Air, here it is in video form:
As amply demonstrated above, what Obama has supported are gun laws far more onerous and restrictive than D.C.’s. It is wholly at odds with his claim to have always supported an individual right to keep and bear arms that mirrored the Heller decision. While Obama mouths the words that the Second Amendment is an individual right that he supports, his belief in "common sense" laws restricting that right are such as would render it a nullity. All of this tells us as much about Obama's character, honesty and trustworthiness as it does about his real position on the Second Amendment.
Posts
