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assault weapons
‘Good Guys’ with Guns Are Fucking Useless in Stopping an Armed ‘Bad Guy’
A new DOJ report on the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is laced with vivid and horrifying detail on the failings of law enforcement, themselves fearing the AR-15 weaponry in the hands of the 18-year-old shooter.
Jan 22, 2024
Remember those twisted words by Wayne LaPierre, then leader of the National Rifle Association, just days after the
mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012? Standing there proudly up on the stage, he said: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
This January LaPierre resigned from his NRA leadership position ahead of the trial on charges of corruption by the State of New York. But his words after Sandy Hook sadly live on despite repeatedly being shown to be total bullshit. Glaringly so in the review of the 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, by the Department of Justice (DOJ), released on January 18.
DOJ’s 575-page report, available in English and in Spanish, is laced with vivid and horrifying detail on the failings of law enforcement, themselves fearing the AR-15 weaponry in the hands of the 18-year-old shooter. Failings causing preventable death. Failings in providing adequate emergency medical care to wounded victims after law enforcement finally entered the classrooms. Failings as dozens of trained officers stood idly by without a leader armed to the teeth with their own AR-15-style firearms.
Here are the opening words by Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta at the news briefing where the DOJ report was officially released, remarks following those by Attorney General Merrick Garland:
The Attorney General just gave a sense of the detailed timeline we have laid out, and the cascading failures that occurred over the course of the 77 minutes between when law enforcement arrived on the scene and when they finally entered the classroom. But we also know the pain—and the failures and missteps—did not end when law enforcement finally entered the classrooms and rescued the survivors.
It continued at minute 78, when it became clear that because there was no leader, there was no plan to triage the 35 victims in classrooms 111 and 112, many of whom had been shot. Victims were moved without appropriate precautions, victims who had already passed away were taken to the hospital in ambulances, while children with bullet wounds were put on school buses without any medical attention. In the commotion, one adult victim was placed on a walkway—on the ground outside—to be attended to. She died there.
As difficult as the vivid words in the report are to ignore, I am not naive. If history is any guide, some in Congress will mightily try to discount the DOJ report, continuing to block any subsequent movement on meaningful gun-control measures. Republican lawmakers in solidly Republican states, as a detailed article in The New York Times describes, are fraid their voter base would vote them out of office if they show any hint of supporting gun-control measures. Those Republicans are waiting for the report to fade away in the news cycle to collect dust.
But then, the victims of the gun carnage in Uvalde, and those before, deserve more than letting the report die buried in dust. They deserve someone taking the debate to the naysayers in Congress and state legislatures armed with hard facts about the effectiveness of gun-control measures, framed by the realities of having none in a gun-friendly state like Texas where the brutal carnage within Robb Elementary School happened. Yes, there is an association between lack of gun regulations in a state and the occurrence of mass shootings, as I describe below.
Here are some of the arguments I would make today replying to some of the naysaying comments (bolded below) common among members of Congress downplaying any need for gun control:
Gun control does not work and won’t reduce gun violence.
Wrong. Take requiring gun licenses, as required in a minority of states today. In his review of studies, Garen Wintemute, who directs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, writes in Health Affairs that license requirements for gun purchases “have repeatedly been associated with reduced rates of [gun] violence.” This body of research is clear.
Furthermore, Michael Siegel at Boston University and his research team found, as reported in Law and Human Behavior, that requiring one to get a permit to purchase firearms was associated with a 60% lower odds of a public mass shooting occurring in a state, controlling for state characteristics like population. Other researchers found the same thing.
Why? Because licenses to purchase firearms typically entail in-person applications and background checks involving multiple databases and, among other things, taking a gun safety course. Basically a more comprehensive examination than standalone background checks singularly taken at the point of a firearm sale.
Congress already passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) in 2022. Nothing more is needed.
Okay, but the BSCA basically only includes more funding for mental health initiatives.
Well, mental illness is the cause of most gun violence, especially mass shootings.
I agree mental troubles underlie many suicides, by firearms and otherwise. And extreme-risk or “red-flag” laws encouraged via funding in the BSCA have been shown to reduce suicides.
But research repeatedly finds that psychiatric disorders, as a comprehensive review by Rand Corporation concluded, are not the principal driver alone across the spectrum of firearm violence. And that includes not being a predictable factor in mass shootings. Sure, after a mass shooting, politicians and media search hard to find a motive and signs of mental troubles; retrospective interpretation to justify mental illness alone as cause. Retrospective interpretation, I submit, many of us not owning a gun would fail.
But an assaults weapon ban is going too far. Based only on the threatening appearance of guns, nothing more.
Maybe the 1994 ban automatically expiring in 2004 was based too much on physical appearance instead of functionality. But today, as criminologist Thomas Gabor and former ATF agent Julius Wachtel have each argued, a ban can be based on objective ballistic lethality, scoring firearms on components including caliber, muzzle velocity, firing rate, ammunition capacity, loading mechanism, and ability to add accessories that increase lethality.
Wachtel in his 2015 article in The Washington Post describes one extreme lethal ballistic feature about AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles. With “their most common calibers—7.62 and .223—these weapons discharge bullets whose extreme energy and velocity readily pierce protective garments commonly worn by police, opening cavities in flesh many times the diameter of the projectile and causing devastating wounds.” Hence, a herd of law enforcement personnel at Uvalde afraid of the weapon in the shooter’s hands milled around aimlessly for over an hour before doing anything.
And such carnage Wachtel describes was visited upon the children and teachers in Robb Elementary School on that fateful day in Uvalde, Texas.
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As House GOP Aims to Kill Biden Pistol Brace Rule, Dems Renew Longshot Gun Control Push
Congresswoman Lucy McBath, whose son was killed by gun violence, said she filed a discharge petition for an assault weapons ban "because we have been sent to Congress to use every tool to help save American lives."
Jun 13, 2023
As most U.S. House Republicans and two Democrats on Tuesday voted to block the Biden administration's regulation of pistols with stabilizing braces, several other Democratic lawmakers renewed a fight for gun control policies unlikely to pass the GOP-controlled chamber.
Democratic Reps. Jared Golden (Maine) and Mary Peltola (Alaska) joined with all Republicans present except Congressmen Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and Thomas Kean (N.J.) to pass a resolution disapproving of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) rule, which was finalized in January.
Under the federal bureau's rule, gun owners who install stabilizing braces on their pistols so the firearms can be used one-handed must register the weapons as short-barreled rifles. Alternatively, they can permanently remove and dispose of the accessory, turn in the firearm at an ATF office, or destroy the gun.
The gun accessories have gained national attention after being used by the perpetrators of mass shootings such as a 2021 rampage at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado as well as a massacre at a Nashville, Tennessee school earlier this year.
" Gun violence is the challenge of our lifetime and the issue of our era."
"The regulation has become a sticking point among conservatives, and gun rights groups like the Gun of Owners of America have urged Congress to pass the disapproval resolution," Roll Call noted Tuesday. "The rule would have gone into effect June 1, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit temporarily stayed the rule while a challenge plays out in the courts."
Even if the House GOP's measure also passes the Democrat-controlled Senate, President Joe Biden would veto it, the White House said Monday, stressing that "this administration has no higher priority than keeping the American people safe, which is jeopardized with a vote in support of a resolution that makes it easier for mass shooters to obtain these deadly weapons."
While Republican lawmakers—and a handful of Democrats—battle the pistol brace policy, Democratic Reps. James Clyburn (S.C.), Lucy McBath, (Ga.), and Mike Thompson (Calif.) are hoping to force votes on gun control legislation with discharge petitions, which allow legislators to bypass GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and bring bills to the floor with simple majority support.
The trio filed discharge petitions Tuesday related to an assault weapons ban and background check legislation. However, actually holding votes on those bills would require winning over not only most—if not all—Democrats but also a handful of Republicans.
As The Washington Post detailed Tuesday:
Of all three bills, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, which Thompson first introduced after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, has previously received the most support from across the aisle. The bill, which would require background checks on those looking to transfer or buy a gun, is sponsored by... Fitzpatrick... and received eight Republican votes in 2021.
The proposal from Clyburn would require background checks to be completed 10 days after someone buys a firearm, increasing the current review period by seven days. It would close the "Charleston loophole," a reference to how Dylann Roof, a white supremacist, was able to obtain a firearm in 2015 after the three-day review period expired but before the background check was completed. He went on to murder nine Black worshippers in South Carolina at a church in Charleston.
[...]
Taking on the herculean pursuit of enacting an assault weapons ban into law is personal for McBath. Her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was killed after being confronted by Michael Dunn for playing loud music in a parked car at a Jacksonville, Florida, gas station in 2012.
Various other Democrats announced that they had signed the discharge petitions on Tuesday. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.)—who was previously the national organizing director for March for Our Lives, formed after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida—said that he was "proud to have been one of the first to sign all three this morning."
Specifically signaling her support for the assault weapons ban, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) tweeted: "Gun violence is an epidemic touching every community. Firearms are now the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in America. This is unacceptable."
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US Supreme Court Refuses to Block Assault Weapons Ban in Illinois
"The Supreme Court once again reaffirms the rights of legislators and local officials to pass gun safety laws," said one advocate.
May 17, 2023
State and local laws banning the sale of assault weapons will stand in Illinois for the time being, following the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal on Wednesday to temporarily block the measures while pro-gun groups appeal them in lower courts.
The high court did not disclose how each justice voted or explain their reasoning for the decision, releasing only a brief statement saying that the request for an injunction was denied.
A gun store in Naperville, Illinois joined the National Association for Gun Rights in challenging a local ordinance that blocks the sale of assault weapons, defined as 26 firearms and other weapons that meet certain criteria. The law went into effect in January after being passed last August, a month after seven people were killed and nearly 50 were injured in a mass shooting in Highland Park, 35 miles away from Naperville.
The lawsuit also challenges the Protect Illinois Communities Act, which also went into force in January and bans the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines across the state.
The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals has taken up the case and is scheduled to hear arguments on June 29.
"This is an important victory in the fight to end gun violence as the U.S. continues to deal with multiple mass shootings."
The gun store and pro-gun group cited two landmark rulings by the Supreme Court, including District of Columbia v. Heller, which held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to possess a firearm for "lawful purposes," independent of serving in a militia; and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which held that courts must consider the gun regulations that were in effect when the Constitution was written when they decide whether a gun law should stand.
The latter ruling expanded access to firearms last year even as gun violence surpassed vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death among children in the United States.
The plaintiffs claimed that "there is no historical analogue to such a ban" as the ones passed in Illinois. State Attorney General Kwame Raoul countered in a court brief that the types of guns targeted by the laws, such as one used by the shooter in Highland Park, fall well outside the Constitution's protections for "firearms that are 'commonly used' for self-defense."
The gun control group Brady said Wednesday's development at the Supreme Court, while not the final word on the case, was "an important victory in the fight to end gun violence."
"This is a great victory for Americans and all of us working to protect our children from the gun violence epidemic facing our nation," said Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, senior adviser to advocacy group Giffords. "With this ruling the Supreme Court once again reaffirms the rights of legislators and local officials to pass gun safety laws."
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'A New Low, Even for You': Outrage After Gov. Abbott Denigrates Texas Murder Victims
"There is no reason to refer to the five victims—including a child—as 'illegal immigrants.' For Greg Abbott and the GOP, the cruelty is the point."
May 01, 2023
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sparked widespread outrage Sunday by derogatorily—and incorrectly—referring to five people killed in a Liberty County mass shooting two days earlier as "illegal immigrants."
On Friday evening, a drunk man allegedly shot and killed five people, including an 8-year-old boy, in a Cleveland home after residents asked him to stop shooting his AR-15-style rifle into the air. The gunman then fled the scene of the massacre and has been on the run ever since.
Police identified those killed as Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 8. All were shot in the head or neck. According toKTRK, two of the slain women were found laying atop three children who were covered in blood but physically unharmed.
"This shooting has nothing to do with immigration status and much to do with your policies."
On Sunday, Abbott offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the suspect, identified as 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza. While the governor said that "our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of the five victims that were taken in this senseless act of violence," he drew nationwide rebuke for referring to the murdered people as "illegal immigrants."
It is believed that all five victims—and Oropeza—are from Honduras. While four of the victims are believed to be undocumented, Velazquez Alvarado's widower said the woman was a permanent U.S. resident and shared a photo of her green card with immigrant rights activist Carlos Eduardo Espina. Abbott's mischaracterization of all five as "illegal immigrants" drew an "added context" disclaimer from Twitter.
"Five human beings lost their lives and Greg Abbott insists on labeling them 'illegal immigrants,'" tweeted former San Antonio mayor and U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro.
Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett, a former senior adviser to Castro, wrote on Twitter that "Greg Abbott is so morally bankrupt that he has to make the senseless murder of five people with an AR-15 about 'illegal immigration.'"
"Forty-eight hours after this massacre and this is the craven hackery he comes up with," Hackett added.
The advocacy group Voto Latino asserted that "there is no reason to refer to the five victims—including a child—as 'illegal immigrants.' For Greg Abbott and the GOP, the cruelty is the point."
Abbott, who is currently in his third term as governor, has been criticized for his tough-on-migrants policies, which include increased border militarization and—like his counterparts in Arizona and Florida—for busing migrants to cities and states with sanctuary policies.
Responding to Abbott's Sunday statement, attorney and political commentator Olayemi Olurin tweeted that "the dehumanization here is otherworldly."
"Even in their deaths he can't see undocumented immigrants as human beings," Olurin said of Abbott. "He couldn't think of anything to call a family who'd been murdered but illegal immigrants."
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), a San Francisco-based advocacy group, said in a Twitter thread that "public figures like Abbott leverage their status by using social media to amplify language painting a specific narrative intended to alter the way you view and treat the people around you. The victims here were your neighbors. They were your friends. They were your colleagues."
"When we read things like that statement from Abbott and his social media team we are confronted with a choice," ILRC added. "Do we want to live in a world where people are... granted their dignity and humanity even in the face of unimaginable tragedy? Or do we want—this?"
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'This Is a National Emergency': Dems Push for Assault Weapons Ban Amid String of Massacres
"It is far past time to reenact an assault weapons ban and get these weapons of war out of our communities."
Jan 24, 2023
A gunman killed at least seven people in the small California city of Half Moon Bay on Monday, the second mass shooting in the state in three days and one of nearly 40 that have occurred since the start of the new year—a rolling epidemic of violence that Congress has repeatedly met with inaction or inadequate compromises with gun lobby-backed Republicans.
The Associated Press reported that police "arrested a suspect in Monday's shootings, 67-year-old Chunli Zhao, after they found him in his car in the parking lot of a sheriff's substation." Officers found a semi-automatic handgun in the suspect's vehicle.
"Four people were found dead and a fifth injured from gunshot wounds at a farm, and officers found three other people killed at another location several miles away," AP noted. "Officials believe Zhao is a worker at one of the facilities and that the victims were workers as well."
The deadly shootings at two separate locations on Monday came after a gunman massacred 11 people in Monterey Park, California on Saturday. Investigators reportedly collected more than 40 bullet casings at the dance studio where the mass shooting took place. The gunman, 72-year-old Huu Can Tran—who took his own life—had previously been arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm.
Police said the gunman used a semi-automatic pistol with an "extended large-capacity magazine."
"It's not clear how the shooter obtained the gun, which was a Cobray M11 9mm semi-automatic weapon compatible with 30-round magazines," Vox's Nicole Narea wrote Monday. "It's also not clear whether the shooter legally obtained a second weapon recovered from inside his van—a handgun that he used to fatally shoot himself. The second weapon can be bought in California; the first has been banned in the state for more than three decades.
"That the semi-automatic weapon is currently illegal in the state makes California unusual; such weapons can be legally purchased in the majority of the U.S.," Narea observed. "And that's led California politicians to call not just for stronger laws in the state, but across the U.S."
The latest string of mass shootings sparked an all-too-familiar outpouring of grief and anger, the latter directed at lawmakers who refuse to support basic and popular gun-safety measures, prioritizing the interests of profit-seeking gun manufacturers and lobbying groups that help bankroll their political campaigns.
"Every time you vote for a lawmaker who opposes gun safety, you're voting for policies that make it more likely your loved one will be slaughtered," Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, said late Monday, pointing to other recent shootings in Des Moines, Iowa and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
"Every time you vote for a lawmaker who opposes gun safety, you’re voting for policies that make it more likely your loved one will be slaughtered."
According to the Gun Violence Archive, 39 mass shootings have taken place across the United States this month alone, leaving 70 dead and dozens more injured.
"What kind of country are we going to be?" Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, asked late Monday. "This is a national emergency and Congress must act this week."
But with Republicans in control of the House and the Senate closely divided, any substantial legislative action on gun violence is unlikely.
Last year, in the wake of a massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, President Joe Biden signed into law a bipartisan measure that includes expanded background checks and incentives for states to enact red flag laws. Gun control advocates slammed the bill as "crumbs" and demanded much more—from universal background checks to a ban on assault weapons.
On Monday, a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation that would "ban the sale, transfer, manufacture, and importation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and other high-capacity ammunition feeding devices."
"It is far past time to reenact an assault weapons ban and get these weapons of war out of our communities," Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said in a statement. "We passed the assault weapons ban in the House last year with bipartisan support, which was then blocked by Senate Republicans. We need to come together to enact this commonsense, effective, and proven policy to reduce gun violence and save lives."
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'The Future the GOP Wants for All of America': Texas Gun Law Unleashes Deadly Mayhem
"Who could've predicted arming folks without a license would result in this type of chaos?" one columnist asked sardonically.
Oct 27, 2022
"Insanity."
"Utter madness."
These are just some of the ways critics are describing Texas' new law allowing people to carry handguns in public without a permit--a Republican achievement that many local officials say has already led to a spike in spontaneous shootings in highly populated parts of the state.
"It seems like now there's been a tipping point where just everybody is armed."
In one high-profile case earlier this year, Tony Earls "pulled out his handgun and opened fire, hoping to strike a man who had just robbed him and his wife at an A.T.M. in Houston," The New York Times reported Wednesday. "Instead, he struck Arlene Alvarez, a 9-year-old girl seated in a passing pickup, killing her."
A grand jury declined to indict Earls, agreeing with his lawyer that "everything about that situation, we believe and contend, was justified under Texas law."
As the Times noted, "The shooting was part of what many sheriffs, police leaders, and district attorneys in urban areas of Texas say has been an increase in people carrying weapons and in spur-of-the-moment gunfire in the year since the state began allowing most adults 21 or over to carry a handgun without a license."
"Far from an outlier, Texas, with its new law, joined what has been an expanding effort to remove nearly all restrictions on carrying handguns," the newspaper continued. "When Alabama's 'permitless carry' law goes into effect in January, half of the states in the nation, from Maine to Arizona, will not require a license to carry a handgun."
"But Texas is the most populous state to do away with handgun permit requirements," the Times pointed out. "Five of the nation's 15 biggest cities are in Texas, making the permitless approach to handguns a new fact of life in urban areas to an extent not seen in other states."
"In the border town of Eagle Pass, drunken arguments have flared into shootings," the newspaper reported. "In El Paso, revelers who legally bring their guns to parties have opened fire to stop fights. In and around Houston, prosecutors have received a growing stream of cases involving guns brandished or fired over parking spots, bad driving, loud music, and love triangles."
"Who could've predicted arming folks without a license would result in this type of chaos?" columnist Wajahat Ali asked sardonically on social media.
Another person tweeted: "This is the future the GOP wants for all of America. Vote accordingly."
Peer-reviewed research published Wednesday showed that Americans are more likely to die early if they live in states dominated by right-wing lawmakers, and weak gun safety measures were among the factors driving up state-level mortality rates.
No statewide data on shootings has been released since the law--passed by Texas Republicans last spring--went into effect last September, but many law enforcement officials say the presence of firearms on the street has increased while handgun permit applications have decreased.
"It seems like now there's been a tipping point where just everybody is armed," said Sheriff Ed Gonzalez of Harris County, which includes Houston.
As the Times reported:
Recent debates over gun laws in Texas have not been limited to handgun licensing. After the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, gun control advocates have pushed to raise the age to purchase an AR-15-style rifle. And after the [United States] Supreme Court struck down New York's restrictive licensing program, a federal court in Texas found that a state law barring adults under 21 from carrying a handgun was unconstitutional. [Republican] Gov. Greg Abbott has suggested he agreed, even as the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees the state police, is appealing.
Meanwhile, the Texas GOP's assault on gun control is just part of a "state-by-state legislative push," which "has coincided with a federal judiciary that has increasingly ruled in favor of carrying guns and against state efforts to regulate them," the Times reported.
With their June decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the high court's reactionary justices--most of whom were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote--struck down New York state's restrictions on the concealed carry of firearms in public. In the process, journalist Mark Joseph Stern argued, they enlarged the scope of the Second Amendment and made it harder for voters around the U.S. to protect communities "by enacting gun safety laws through the democratic process."
Calling it "a revolution in Second Amendment law," Stern wrote that "the Supreme Court has effectively rendered gun restrictions presumptively unconstitutional."
Before the ruling was handed down, journalist Jay Michaelson shed light on the right's "preposterous misreading of the Second Amendment, funded largely by gun manufacturers," in a Rolling Stone essay:
Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, until 2008, no federal court had held that the Second Amendment conveyed a right to own a gun. On the contrary, the Supreme Court clearly said that it didn't.
[...]
And what had once been a fringe view rejected by the Supreme Court--that the Second Amendment gave individuals a right to own guns--gradually became Republican Party gospel when the fringe took over the party. Former Chief Justice Warren Burger (a conservative appointed by Richard Nixon) described it as "a fraud on the American public."
Years before making it easier to carry handguns in public, Texas Republicans turned their state into one of the 29 nationwide with so-called "stand your ground" laws. These laws, also known as "shoot first" laws, upend the common law principle of a "duty to retreat," enabling individuals to use deadly force in purported self-defense as a first, rather than last, resort.
A study published earlier this year found that "shoot first" laws are associated with hundreds of additional firearm homicides each year.
Although Texas was one of the few states where the enactment of "shoot first" laws did not lead to a significant change in gun homicide rates between 2000 and 2016, it remains to be seen if its new permitless carry law will generate a surge in violent encounters between armed parties claiming "self-defense."
Last week in Florida, which became the first state to enact a "shoot first" law by statute in 2005, a man and his teenage son were arrested for attempted murder after allegedly shooting at a woman whom they suspected of being a burglar.
There are more guns than people in the U.S., and due to National Rifle Association-bankrolled Republicans' opposition to meaningful gun safety laws, it remains relatively easy for people to purchase and carry firearms in many states.
As a result, there have been thousands of mass shootings since 2012, and guns recently became the leading cause of death among children and teens in the United States.
Studies have shown that gun regulations with high levels of public support, including bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, help reduce the number and severity of fatal mass shootings.
"We don't have to live this way," mom, teacher, and Democratic Minnesota House of Representatives candidate Erin Preese said Monday after a deadly school shooting in St. Louis. "Vote for lawmakers who will stand up to the gun lobby. Our kids' lives depend on it."
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The Second Amendment and Gun Violence in the US
The loose interpretation of the Second Amendment is responsible, to a great extent, for thousands of lives lost every year.
Jul 11, 2022
It has been a particularly sad 4th of July. In Highland Park, Illinois, a young gunman opened fire on a parade with a high-caliber rifle, killing 7, wounding at least 47 others and traumatizing many more. In the same weekend, more than 50 people were shot in New York City. It is conceivable that those shootings were made possible because of a loose interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
A fair textual and contextual reading of the Second Amendment clearly indicates that those entitled to claim a constitutional right to bear arms are not average citizens, but rather those belonging to a group of civilians trained as soldiers.
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on December 15, 1791, reads: 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. This amendment was inspired by the right to keep and bear arms recognized in the English common law, and by the English Bill of Rights of 1689 that prevailed in the American colonies. The scope and prerogatives arising under the Second Amendment have been the subject of considerable controversy, and its vague interpretation has had serious legal consequences.
Opponents of gun control emphasize the last part of the sentence, "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," neglecting that this constitutional entitlement is centered on a "well regulated militia," which at the time was deemed "necessary to the security of a free state." As noted by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, a well regulated militia is "the most natural defense of a free country."
The intimate connection between the right to bear arms and the natural rights of self-defense and resistance to oppression noted by Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780,) an English jurist known for writing the Commentaries on the Laws of England, is critical to understand the meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment. The civic duty to act in concert with fellow citizens to defend the state is also at the core of the right to bear arms under the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776: "the people have the right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state."
Obviously, the exacting circumstances to defend the state during the American Revolution were totally different from those existing now. On September 17, 2013, during an interview with John Hockenberry in WNYC radio, former Associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, discussed her dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), where the Supreme Court held that 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 a home.
Justice Ginsburg said, "The Second Amendment has a preamble about the need for a militia...Historically, the new government had no money to pay for an army, so they relied on the state militias. And the state required men to have certain weapons and they specified in the law what weapons these people had to keep in their home so that when they were called to do service as militiamen, they would have them. That was the entire purpose of the Second Amendment... So, the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete."
Also in a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens stated that the court's judgement was a "strained and unpersuasive reading" which overturned longstanding precedent. He stated that the court had "bestowed a dramatic upheaval in the law".
Thus, a fair textual and contextual reading of the Second Amendment clearly indicates that those entitled to claim a constitutional right to bear arms are not average citizens, but rather those belonging to a group of civilians trained as soldiers who, in case of an emergency--such as a threat to the state--must become available to supplement the regular army.
At the time the second amendment was enacted, the Founding Fathers couldn't have predicted the tremendous technological advances in modern weaponry. There are considerable differences between the muskets used during revolutionary times and assault weapons readily available today, capable of killing scores of people, including children, in a matter of seconds.
The erroneous identification of the "right to bear arms" with an individual right finds unfortunate support in a misguided, but culturally entrenched, understanding of virility. Far too many individuals equate gun possession with manhood. But, as New York journalist Michael Hart observes, "The adults who promote gun culture need to be understood and I'm not sure that as a society we've come close to doing that yet. I don't understand at all why men - and it's overwhelmingly men - feel that owning a gun is something they need to do. It's somehow a part of their identity - but what does that mean? Is that identity so hollowed out, so fearful, so worshipful of absolute deadly power that guns supply a missing link? Do these men feel bigger, stronger, more themselves by owning a gun? Does the prospect of killing another human being draw them?"
The loose interpretation of the Second Amendment is responsible, to a great extent, for thousands of lives lost every year. The absence of effective legal restraints to the marketing of arms in this country, resulting from this misguided understanding, will continue to cast a shadow over our survival as a truly civilized society.
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Boulder: Is it Time to End the Second Amendment?
American mass murders are a remnant of our slave patrols; RBG was right that Heller was wrongly decided and needs to be overturned.
Mar 23, 2021
Another mass gun murder just happened in America, the seventh in 7 days, and already "Second Amendment legislators" are offering the 2021 version of thoughts and prayers. Lauren Boebert just tweeted, "May God be with them." Standing in front of her wall of assault weapons, most likely.
And, of course, today on rightwing talk radio and Fox News they've already begun lengthy bloviation about the Second Amendment. So, let's just clear a few things up.
The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the difference--see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, an action necessary to get Virginia's vote to ratify the Constitution.
It had nothing whatsoever to do with making sure mass murderers could shoot up public venues and schools. Founders including Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that, and we all should be too.
In today's America, you have the "right" to a gun, but no "right" to healthcare or education. In every other developed country in the world, the reality is the exact opposite.
In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South they were called "slave patrols," and were regulated by the states.
In Georgia, for example, a generation before the American Revolution, laws were passed in 1755 and 1757 that required all plantation owners or their male white employees to be members of the Georgia Militia, and for those armed militia members to make monthly inspections of the quarters of all slaves in the state. The law defined which counties had which armed militias and required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who may be planning uprisings.
As Dr. Carl T. Bogus wrote for the University of California Law Review in 1998, "The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds."
It's the answer to the question raised by the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained when he asks, "Why don't they just rise up and kill the whites?" It was a largely rhetorical question, because every southerner of the era knew the answer: Well-regulated militias kept enslaved people in chains.
Sally E. Haden, in her brilliant and essential book Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas, notes that, "Although eligibility for the Militia seemed all-encompassing, not every middle-aged white male Virginian or Carolinian became a slave patroller." There were exemptions so "men in critical professions" like judges, legislators and students could stay at their work. Generally, though, she documents how most southern men between ages 18 and 45--including physicians and ministers--had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives.
And slave rebellions were keeping the slave patrols busy.
By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down uprisings by enslaved men and women. As I detail in my book The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment, slavery can only exist in a police state, which the South had become by the early 1700s, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.
Southerners worried that if the anti-slavery folks in the North could figure out a way to disband--or even move out of the state--those southern militias, the police state of the South would collapse. And, similarly, if the North were to invite into military service enslaved men from the South, then they could be emancipated, which would collapse the institution of slavery, along with the southern economic and social "ways of life."
These two possibilities worried southerners like slaveholder James Monroe, George Mason (who owned over 300 enslaved humans) and the southern Christian evangelical, Patrick "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death" Henry (Virginia's largest slaveholder).
Their main concern was that Article 1, Section 8 of the newly-proposed Constitution, which gave the federal government the power to raise and supervise an army, could also allow that federal army to subsume their state militias and change them from slavery-enforcing institutions into something that could even, one day, free their enslaved men, women and children.
This was not an imagined threat. Famously, 12 years earlier, during the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, Lord Dunsmore offered freedom to slaves who could escape and join his forces. "Liberty to Slaves" was stitched onto their jacket pocket flaps. During the War, British General Henry Clinton extended the practice in 1779. And numerous freed slaves served in General Washington's army.
Thus, southern legislators and plantation owners lived not just in fear of their own slaves rebelling, but also in fear that their slaves could be emancipated through the newly-forming United States offering them military service.
At the ratifying convention in Virginia in 1788, Henry laid it out:
"Let me here call your attention to that part [Article 1, Section 8 of the proposed Constitution] which gives the Congress power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States. . . .
"By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defence is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither ... this power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little remains of power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory."
George Mason expressed a similar fear:
"The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless, by disarming them. Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them [under this proposed Constitution]..."
Henry then bluntly laid it out:
"If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia."
And why was that such a concern for Patrick Henry?
"In this state," he said, "there are 236,000 Blacks, and there are many in several other states. But there are few or none in the Northern States. ... May Congress not say, that every Black man must fight? Did we not see a little of this last war? We were not so hard pushed as to make emancipation general; but acts of Assembly passed that every slave who would go to the army should be free."
Patrick Henry was also convinced that the power over the various state militias given the federal government in the new Constitution could be used to strip the slave states of their slave-patrol militias. He knew the majority attitude in the North opposed slavery, and he worried they'd use the new Constitution they were then debating ratifying to free the South's slaves (a process then called "Manumission").
The abolitionists would, he was certain, use that power (and, ironically, this is pretty much what Abraham Lincoln ended up doing):
"[T]hey will search that paper [the Constitution], and see if they have power of manumission," said Henry. "And have they not, sir? Have they not power to provide for the 'general defence and welfare'? May they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery? May they not pronounce all slaves free, and will they not be warranted by that power?
"This is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper [the Constitution] speaks to the point: they have the power in clear, unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it."
He added: "This is a local [Southern] matter, and I can see no propriety in subjecting it to Congress."
James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution" and a slaveholder himself, basically called Patrick Henry paranoid.
"I was struck with surprise," Madison said, "when I heard him express himself alarmed with respect to the emancipation of slaves. . . . There is no power to warrant it, in that paper [the Constitution]. If there be, I know it not."
But the southern slavemasters' fears wouldn't go away.
Patrick Henry even argued that southerner's "property" (enslaved humans) would be lost under the new Constitution, and the resulting slave uprising would be less than peaceful or tranquil:
"In this situation," Henry said to Madison, "I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone."
So Madison, who had (at Jefferson's insistence) already begun to prepare proposed amendments to the Constitution, changed his first draft of one that addressed the militia issue to make sure it was unambiguous that the southern states could maintain their slave patrol militias.
His first draft for what became the Second Amendment had said: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country [emphasis mine]: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."
But Henry, Mason and others wanted southern states to preserve their slave-patrol militias independent of the federal government. So Madison changed the word "country" to the word "state," and redrafted the Second Amendment into today's form:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State [emphasis mine], the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Little did Madison realize that one day in the future weapons-manufacturing corporations would use his slave patrol militia amendment to protect their "right" to manufacture and sell assault weapons used to murder people in schools, theaters and stores, and use the profits to own their own political party.
In today's America, you have the "right" to a gun, but no "right" to healthcare or education. In every other developed country in the world, the reality is the exact opposite.
Pointing out how ludicrous this has become, David Sirota (and colleagues) writes in his Daily Poster newsletter today: "Last week, the National Rifle Association publicly celebrated its success in striking down an assault weapons ban in Boulder, Colorado. Five days later, Boulder was the scene of a mass shooting, reportedly with the same kind of weapon that the city tried to ban."
The Second Amendment was never meant to make it easier for mass shooters to get assault weapons, and America needs rational gun policy to join the other civilized nations of this planet who aren't the victims of daily mass killings.
It's long past time to overturn Heller, which Ruth Bader Ginsberg repeatedly argued the Court should do, and abolish today's bizarre interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
This post originally appeared at hartmannreport.com, but is published here with permission of the author.
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Are Recently Proposed Gun Regulations Constitutional?
Examining firearm reforms and the Second Amendment
Mar 03, 2018
Keeping and bearing arms is a constitutional right, but the Supreme Court has gone to great lengths to emphasize that it is not absolute. In 2008, the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in District of Columbia v. Heller that "the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited."
In the wake of the Parkland, Florida school shooting, major U.S. retailers have decided to raise the minimum age to buy a gun to 21. Lawmakers and reform advocates, meanwhile, are offering several laws to regulate guns--but opponents of at least some of those reforms have cited the Second Amendment's 27 words to reject such proposals out of hand.
So do these recent proposals pass constitutional muster? Here, I analyze a handful of these policy suggestions to see if they are in line with recent federal court rulings on the Second Amendment.
Bans on Assault Rifles and Large-Capacity Magazines
Every federal appeals court that's ruled on assault rifle and large-capacity magazine bans has concluded that they comply with the Constitution. One court held that assault rifles aren't covered by the Second Amendment at all; others that even if they are covered, they still can be banned because doing so sufficiently advances public safety. No matter the reasoning, the outcome has been the same: the Second Amendment doesn't prevent these types of bans.
The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has had opportunities to overrule the lower courts, but the justices have consistently declined to do so.
Bans on Bump Stocks
Even the National Rifle Association has voiced support for restrictions on bump stocks--an attachment that allows semiautomatic weapons to fire faster.
A ban wouldn't directly restrict anyone's ability to have a firearm; it would just prohibit them from modifying firearms into something more like a machine gun. And in Heller, the Supreme Court strongly suggested that machine guns can be prohibited.
Age Limits on Firearm Purchases
The constitutionality of this restriction is a closer call; many rights come into effect at age 18. One common comparison is to the right to vote--but there, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment expressly sets the age at 18. Besides obvious differences between ballots and guns that could justify different treatment, no such language is in the Second Amendment.
Meanwhile, the leading Second Amendment case on age restrictions upheld a federal prohibition on handgun sales to people under 21. The court's conclusion turned on the fact that, historically, the age of majority was 21, not 18.
What's more, some have proposed raising the age for purchasing assault rifles only. As noted, complete bans on assault rifles are regularly upheld, so a less restrictive age requirement should be even safer under the Second Amendment.
Universal Background Checks
There appears to be no serious debate about whether requiring background checks for gun purchasers presents Second Amendment problems. In any event, no courts have held that the current background check system violates the right to keep and bear arms. The expansion of that system to more firearm transfers shouldn't affect that conclusion.
Waiting Periods
Waiting periods vary, but the 3-day period proposed in Florida is quite standard. Recently, in Silvester v. Harris, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld California's 10-day waiting period, and in February the Supreme Court opted not to disrupt that ruling. Under the Silvester analysis, the shorter 3-day period proposed in Florida is constitutional. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the Supreme Court's decision not to hear Silvester, arguing that the lower court's reasoning was flawed. No other justices signed on to his opinion.
The Upshot?
The Second Amendment presents a significant constitutional obstacle to some regulation, and we should not underestimate the powerful symbolic role it plays in gun politics. But if the tragic shooting in Parkland can overcome the perennial gridlock and spur a new round of legislating, and if recent federal court cases serve as our guide, these gun restrictions likely would not be struck down as unconstitutional.
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A Welcome Democratic Stand on Guns, But Are These the Bills We're Looking For?
The historic sit-in in the House is impressive to behold, but the two proposals the Democrats are demanding a vote on are very problematic
Jun 23, 2016
It was almost midnight when I found myself glued to the live video of scores of Democratic congressmembers then about twelve hours into their historic sit-in. They were occupying the House chamber, jerry-rigging a social media-based broadcast when the Republican leadership shut down the C-Span cameras, rising one after another to speak with passion, reminding the nation that business as usual is no longer okay. They are proud of themselves and each other, as they should be. They are grateful to civil rights icon and Georgia Congressman John Lewis who has been leading them in speaking truth to power. By late morning Thursday they were continuing to occupy the House. Despite the Republican leadership announcing that the House is not in session, they are insisting that there be no congressional recess without voting on the proposed bills, and they are demanding that the public, filling the galleries, be allowed to stay.
They are reminding the world that since 1968 more Americans have been killed in gun violence than in all the wars in US history. They are demanding a vote on gun safety laws. It's a moving, empowering thing to see. It's rare, powerful, and should be applauded.
"It's a moving, empowering thing to see... And yet. There's a huge problem."
And yet. There's a huge problem. The two proposals the Democrats are demanding a vote on are very problematic. One bill proposes only a small, completely insufficient expansion of background checks. The second would not only be ineffective in preventing gun violence, but would cause a dangerous increase in racial profiling and Islamophobia. That second bill is the basis for the slogan "no fly, no buy" - which refers to making sure that no one on law enforcement's so-called "no-fly" lists is ever allowed to buy a weapon.
If we were talking about actually preventing real terrorists from buying weapons, that would be a no-brainer. But the "no-fly" lists are not lists of terrorists; they are lists of people - American citizens, green-card holders, visitors, citizens of other countries - who end up on the FBI's or other law enforcement agencies' lists for reasons we and they never know. Maybe they share a name with someone once suspected of knowing someone whose second cousin once skyped with someone thought to be a would-be terrorist. Maybe their college roommate ended up trying to go to Syria. For some few of them, maybe they really do have dangerous intentions. But there are thousands of people on these lists. Most of them can't even find out why they're not allowed to fly, let alone succeed at challenging the prohibition. We should not forget that President Nelson Mandela remained on the US "terrorist" watch-list until 2008. What the American Civil Liberties Union calls our "error-prone and unfair watch-listing system" doesn't produce a list of terrorists at all.
If it was up to me, I'd prohibit anyone - anyone, on or off those lists - from buying or possessing these lethal weapons. But it's not up to me. And unfortunately the "no fly, no buy" rule being proposed in the newly militant House tonight is not going to prevent gun violence either. What it is going to do, unfortunately, is further legitimize these watch lists, now as the basis for a politically more popular version of gun control. But as the ACLU noted, "Our nation's watch-listing system is error-prone and unreliable because it uses vague and overbroad criteria and secret evidence to place individuals on blacklists without a meaningful process to correct government error and clear their names."
And we know that those "vague and overbroad criteria" end up being applied disproportionately to Muslims, Arabs, South Asians and others wrongly assumed to be linked to terrorism. It is terribly sad that some of our most principled, consistent members of Congress - members of the Black Caucus, the conscience of the Congress, and the Progressive Caucus, whose members work against racism, against racial profiling, against Islamophobia and hatred, against war and beyond - are among those accepting and urging even greater reliance on this "error-prone and unreliable" system in the name of preventing gun violence.
The Democratic leadership is refusing to allow their now-insurgent party to officially endorse the most sensible (however insufficient) versions of gun control laws: outlawing assault weapons, removing the prohibition on federal research on the public health consequences of gun violence, and universal background checks. Those things, lethally opposed by the NRA, would not stop the epidemic of gun violence in this country but unlike the no-fly lists they would certainly help. Some in the sit-in rejected those restrictions. At 12:35 in the morning, Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke, one of those who had set up the live-streaming of the debate after the Republican leadership turned off the cameras, rose to call for all three of those goals.
The congressional sit-in is bringing moral power and renewed urgency to the cause of gun control. Watching the Democrats shout down Republican leaders desperately trying to reclaim control of the House might challenge the partisan bickering that has paralyzed Congress for years. It may mark the beginning of a turn towards the re-legitimation of Congress, long demonized as the least effective, least useful, least popular institution around. That renewed legitimacy, though, would be far more likely achieved if these members of Congress, as they consolidate their new moral credibility, would finally reject the current iteration of "no fly" lists as the basis for gun control - or indeed, as a valid method of counter-terrorism.
The Congressional sit-in protesters should be congratulated for standing up for their principles. And they should be pressured to make sure their plans to act on those principles don't undermine other principles of civil rights and equality.
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