Saturday, April 21, 2012

The Evolution of the 2nd Amendment

WBEZ reports

The evolution of the Second Amendment is expertly detailed in a spellbinding New Yorker story, “Battleground America," in the current issue.  Here are some highlights.

6.“In 1957, when the N.R.A. moved into new headquarters, its motto, at the building’s entrance, read, ‘Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation.’ It didn’t say anything about freedom, or self-defense, or rights.” 

12.“According to the constitutional-law scholar Carl Bogus, at least sixteen of the twenty-seven law-review articles published between 1970 and 1989 that were favorable to the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment were ‘written by lawyers who had been directly employed by or represented the N.R.A. or other gun-rights organizations.’ In an interview, former Chief Justice Warren Burger said that the new interpretation of the Second Amendment was ‘one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime’.” 

14.“There are nearly three hundred million privately owned firearms in the United States: a hundred and six million handguns, a hundred and five million rifles, and eighty-three million shotguns. That works out to about one gun for every American.” 

15.“According to the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Policy Opinion Center at the University of Chicago, the prevalence of gun ownership has declined steadily in the past few decades. In 1973, there were guns in roughly one in two households in the United States; in 2010, one in three. In 1980, nearly one in three Americans owned a gun; in 2010, that figure had dropped to one in five.”

10 comments:

  1. You left out the part about how the modern view of the Second Amendment is tied in with the general rights revolution of the sixties. You also didn't mention what the author tells us about this right having been advocated by some blacks seeking civil rights. And where's mention that the Gun Control Act of 1968 was in part an attempt to control the "Negro problem."

    It's obvious that the author of this article doesn't like guns, but despite her best efforts, she does give us a good overview of how we've come as a nation to understand a basic right. The inclusion of other civil rights in the discussion shows that we do learn about rights over time, and this is one of many that we're getting better on.

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  2. “According to the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Policy Opinion Center at the University of Chicago, the prevalence of gun ownership has declined steadily in the past few decades."

    Uh, no.

    The survey found that the number of people REPORTING having a gun has declined steadily. If I got a random phone call from some pollster doofus asking me if I owned guns, I would falsely report "NO".

    Words matter.

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    1. Just so--if I don't recognize the number, I don't answer. Anyone who needs to speak to me will leave a message.

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  3. Mike

    My post for - "All Right, All Right, the NRA is not Intentionally Alarmist" was originally meant for this article/section. However,after looking at both I would say it fits equally well. A "pro-gun" interpretation of the U.S. Constitution is not the product of evolution; it is as old as the document itself.

    Unlike what Warren Burger contends it surely was not fraud. Prior to 1934 it was the law of the land. One could order a fully automatic Tommy Gun from a catalogue w/ no problems.

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    1. As is often the case, thugs do wrong, and politicians feel compelled to pass a law that only burden's good people.

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  4. 6. The NRA started fighting for gun owner rights after people started trying to take it away.

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  5. 6. The NRA started fighting for gun owner rights after people started trying to take it away.

    Citation?

    "Unlike what Warren Burger contends it surely was not fraud. Prior to 1934 it was the law of the land. One could order a fully automatic Tommy Gun from a catalogue w/ no problems."

    And now the question of whether one has the right to buy fully automatic weapons, legally, without any special licencses has been rendered moot. Oh, wait, no it hasn't.

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    1. What is with you and citations? Am I not allowed to be my own free thinking individual around here? Is your obsession with citations due to how your brain operates? Do you need someone else to process information and come up with a nice quote posted on a progressive website to tell you what it means?

      I am citing myself, Democommie. I reached this startling conclusion all by myself, because it is pretty ludicrous to think otherwise. This is how I pieced it together:

      -In the 50’s gun ownership was practically unrestricted (with the exception of NFA items).
      -The NRA’s focus was on safety, marksmanship, recreation, etc.
      -The 60’s brought on some high profile shootings: JFK*, MLK, Charles Whitman, etc…
      -Some people started calling for gun control to prevent future tragedies.
      -The NRA fought those new regulations and added “protection of gun owner’s rights” as one of the things they do.

      To question the citation of internet scholar TS, is to suggest this order was reversed:

      -The NRA enjoys a near unlimited right (again with the exception of NFA)
      -The NRA starts fighting for “freedom” and “rights” even though they already have them (this is where you lose me). Who are they fighting?
      -Because the NRA is fighting no one for rights they already have, the gun control movement gains traction and gives them someone to fight. Why? Are these people irritated by the gloating? Are they just trying to give credence to the NRA’s paranoia in a secret effort to make the NRA not look insane?

      *Do you need me to cite that JFK was shot?

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  6. I emphatically disagree with the notion of a new interpretation of the Second Amendment. The historical writings of the Framers are crystal clear. And various court opinions from 1789 through the late 1880s uphold a clear, broad right that is consistent with the writings of the Framers.

    I can only wonder how much the Internet has played a part in the resurgence of discovery. I have to admit I probably would not have invested the time to visit several libraries to research the writings of the Framers and 100+ year old court documents. Thanks to the Internet, that task that would have taken weeks took several hours.

    I can fully appreciate (although I disagree) with people who want to debate whether we should eliminate the Second Amendment. What I cannot appreciate are people who claim that the Second Amendment means something other than what it really means. And that meaning is simple. It recognizes the pre-existing right of all citizens to keep and bear arms for the purpose of defending themselves, their communities, and their nation from attack -- whether the attacker is an individual criminal, a gang, a local unit of government, the federal government itself, or a foreign nation.

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  7. Hey Cap! It is clear and many people who want to introduce another prohibition know what the doc says and do not care. While seemingly benevolent, I see some (key word) of the same mind set here. Prohibitions do not work, and when they appear to work, they cause more probs than they solve.

    Prior to 1914, your drug dealer wore a bow tie and called you sir. You could go to the local drugstore and buy drugs - go figure. Coke, opiouts, and anything else you wanted and the world did not jump off its axis. Same w/ guns, explosives, and tobacco. And there was no federal income tax - somehow Americans managed.

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