The opinion of this writer is not the opinion of the Ridgeview News
Machine Guns, Dead Children & the Supreme Court
I recently asked local Republicans deep in Trump country why they would vote for Trump over Biden. Trump is “Pro 2d Amendment,” they said. Implying somehow that Biden and Democrats are not.
Since the Heller decision in 2008, the Second Amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”
Democrats are not against the Second Amendment. But Democrats also see that America has a gun-induced public health crisis.
Bullets are now the leading cause of childhood deaths in the United States.
Because of unregulated gun sales in the US, we have 4% of the world’s population and 46% of the world’s guns.
After the 2022 Uvalde school massacre, where 21 were killed (19 children) and 17 injured by a shooter with an AR-15 and 375 rounds of 5.56-caliber ammunition, President Biden signed a bipartisan gun control bill, the first in 30 years, which made minor but important changes in gun laws.
Since then, nothing because . . .
Republicans block every Democratic proposal to expand background checks to all gun sales and to ban some semi-automatic weapons. Any limitation on gun sellers’, buyers’, and users’ total freedom to do their gun business is taken as an attack on the Second Amendment.
It is not. As Justice Scalia wrote in Heller, “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. [It is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Democrats want to regulate gun sales to reduce gun violence and so that ordinary citizens cannot purchase weapons of war – a constitutional response to a crisis.
Republicans respond by blocking gun control, but not because they are “pro 2d amendment.” Republicans block gun controlnow because they are simply pro-gun. Republicans’ talking points, the NRA, Donald Trump, and gun manufacturers requireit.
We have too many guns, especially too many automatic and semi-automatic weapons, which serve only to kill people.
More guns do not make us safer, an argument that has been debunked by every study. Judge Alito has the nonchalance to claim that because we have so many guns, more people needguns for self-defense. And thus nothing should be done to stop the US wild West free-for-all.
Too many dangerous weapons cause rising gun death rates, fatal accidents, more suicide-by-gun, more hostile criminal interactions, and more domestic violence. Dead children, murdered in their classrooms, when one dead child is too many.
Nevertheless, in the name of the Second Amendment, the Trump-stacked Supreme Court steadily blocks every attempt to regulate guns while stealthily expanding the Second Amendment.
In the Bruen case, the Court rejected a NY law that required anyone who wants to carry a concealed handgun outside the home to show a “proper cause” for the license.
The law was constitutional under the existing test so Justice Thomas, writing for the 6-3 majority, invented a new test: the government must prove that any regulation is consistent with the historical understanding of the Second Amendment.
(Since few thought the Second Amendment protected an individual right to gun ownership until 2008 when Justice Scalia “discovered” it, it’s a trick test and NY failed.)
The Hawaii Supreme Court bravely exposed this foolishness.“In its Second Amendment cases, the US Supreme Court “distorts and cherry-picks historical evidence. It shrinks, alters, and discards historical facts that don’t fit.” “Time-traveling to 1791 or 1868 . . . is a dangerous way to look at the federal constitution.”
The Supreme Court’s 2d amendment jurisprudence is dangerous.
In Cargill, the Supreme Court misinterpreted the one US gun law that has stood the test of time: machine guns have been illegal since the 1930s when gangsters like Al Capone were outgunning law enforcement.
Bump stocks turn semi-automatic weapons into machine guns. In 2017 when a shooter used bump stocks to fire more than 1000 bullets into a Las Vegas crowd, killing 60 and wounding at least 413 more, the Trump administration ATF proposed a new rule, finalized in 2019, banning these lethal devices.
Last week, the conservative Supreme Court struck back. Ignoring facts and logic, Justice Thomas, writing for the Republican 6-3 majority, held that a bump stock didn’t make a gun a “machine gun” because a single trigger pull doesn’t do the automatic firing job alone, but is aided by the recoil action of the gun – using a single trigger pull.
Anything it takes to stop gun regulation.
Justice Scalia in the Heller decision disagreed. Gun control is constitutional:
“[C]oncealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the [Second] Amendment [and there is no] doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
If you agree that gun regulation is necessary and constitutional, then you support the Second Amendment.
And you also agree with Democrats. Support the Second Amendment, vote Biden/Harris, give them a Democratic Congress and let’s get some national gun control legislation before the Bill of Rights becomes a suicide pact.
PRO-GUN CONTROL IS NOT ANTI-2D AMENDMENT
Machine Guns, Dead Children & the Supreme Court
I recently asked local Republicans deep in Trump country why they would vote for Trump over Biden. Trump is “Pro 2d Amendment,” they said. Implying somehow that Biden and Democrats are not.
Since the Heller decision in 2008, the Second Amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”
Democrats are not against the Second Amendment. But Democrats also see that America has a gun-induced public health crisis.
Bullets are now the leading cause of childhood deaths in the United States.
Because of unregulated gun sales in the US, we have 4% of the world’s population and 46% of the world’s guns.
After the 2022 Uvalde school massacre, where 21 were killed (19 children) and 17 injured by a shooter with an AR-15 and 375 rounds of 5.56-caliber ammunition, President Biden signed a bipartisan gun control bill, the first in 30 years, which made minor but important changes in gun laws.
Since then, nothing because . . .
Republicans block every Democratic proposal to expand background checks to all gun sales and to ban some semi-automatic weapons. Any limitation on gun sellers’, buyers’, and users’ total freedom to do their gun business is taken as an attack on the Second Amendment.
It is not. As Justice Scalia wrote in Heller, “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. [It is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Democrats want to regulate gun sales to reduce gun violence and so that ordinary citizens cannot purchase weapons of war – a constitutional response to a crisis.
Republicans respond by blocking gun control, but not because they are “pro 2d amendment.” Republicans block gun controlnow because they are simply pro-gun. Republicans’ talking points, the NRA, Donald Trump, and gun manufacturers requireit.
We have too many guns, especially too many automatic and semi-automatic weapons, which serve only to kill people.
More guns do not make us safer, an argument that has been debunked by every study. Judge Alito has the nonchalance to claim that because we have so many guns, more people needguns for self-defense. And thus nothing should be done to stop the US wild West free-for-all.
Too many dangerous weapons cause rising gun death rates, fatal accidents, more suicide-by-gun, more hostile criminal interactions, and more domestic violence. Dead children, murdered in their classrooms, when one dead child is too many.
Nevertheless, in the name of the Second Amendment, the Trump-stacked Supreme Court steadily blocks every attempt to regulate guns while stealthily expanding the Second Amendment.
In the Bruen case, the Court rejected a NY law that required anyone who wants to carry a concealed handgun outside the home to show a “proper cause” for the license.
The law was constitutional under the existing test so Justice Thomas, writing for the 6-3 majority, invented a new test: the government must prove that any regulation is consistent with the historical understanding of the Second Amendment.
(Since few thought the Second Amendment protected an individual right to gun ownership until 2008 when Justice Scalia “discovered” it, it’s a trick test and NY failed.)
The Hawaii Supreme Court bravely exposed this foolishness.“In its Second Amendment cases, the US Supreme Court “distorts and cherry-picks historical evidence. It shrinks, alters, and discards historical facts that don’t fit.” “Time-traveling to 1791 or 1868 . . . is a dangerous way to look at the federal constitution.”
The Supreme Court’s 2d amendment jurisprudence is dangerous.
In Cargill, the Supreme Court misinterpreted the one US gun law that has stood the test of time: machine guns have been illegal since the 1930s when gangsters like Al Capone were outgunning law enforcement.
Bump stocks turn semi-automatic weapons into machine guns. In 2017 when a shooter used bump stocks to fire more than 1000 bullets into a Las Vegas crowd, killing 60 and wounding at least 413 more, the Trump administration ATF proposed a new rule, finalized in 2019, banning these lethal devices.
Last week, the conservative Supreme Court struck back. Ignoring facts and logic, Justice Thomas, writing for the Republican 6-3 majority, held that a bump stock didn’t make a gun a “machine gun” because a single trigger pull doesn’t do the automatic firing job alone, but is aided by the recoil action of the gun – using a single trigger pull.
Anything it takes to stop gun regulation.
Justice Scalia in the Heller decision disagreed. Gun control is constitutional:
“[C]oncealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the [Second] Amendment [and there is no] doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
If you agree that gun regulation is necessary and constitutional, then you support the Second Amendment.
And you also agree with Democrats. Support the Second Amendment, vote Biden/Harris, give them a Democratic Congress and let’s get some national gun control legislation before the Bill of Rights becomes a suicide pact.
Nothing screams “pro-life” quite like an AR-15 equipped with a bump stock.
WWJD?
Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.
Luke 22:35-38
Jesus mentions weapons in a positive light, saying, “But now, let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag. And let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one”