As everyone knows, Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot through the head Saturday and remains in critical condition. Six other people were murdered, including a federal judge, a nine year old child and 79 year old woman. Scores of others were wounded, many critically.
You would anticipate such an atrocity touching off a strong political reaction, or more precisely, a strong reaction from politicians. Calls for example for legislation to require television networks to fact-check everything their pundits put on the air; calls for increased support of outreach programs aimed at identifying and helping deranged people like Jared Lee Loughner; maybe even, God forbid, calls for stricter controls over who can possess firearms and what kind of firearms they can have.
I don’t claim to have access to every statement made by every member of congress, but in the 72 hours since the shooting, I have scoured every media outlet I do have access to seeking calls for any of the above and have found . . . NONE.
More disturbing, and perhaps illustrative of why politicians rank far above used car salesman on the smarminess scale for most of us, what I have found is calls coming from both sides of the aisle demanding more protection for . . . you guessed it . . . POLITICIANS!
A few examples: James Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina (almost an oxymoron I know) suggested that congressmen should not be subjected to security inspections at airports like the rest of us because that puts them in an exposed and vulnerable position. Republican Dan Burton of Indiana has called for a plexiglass wall to be installed across the front of the public gallery in the House chamber. Democrat Robert Brady of Pennsylvania wants to make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could in any way be seen as threatening to federal officials.
The closest thing I have seen to a call for tighter regulation of firearms comes from Republican Peter King of New York. He wants a law that would ban possession of a gun within 1,000 feet of a member of Congress or other “high profile” government official. Clearly, if such a law were in place, Congresswoman Giffords would not have been shot; nor, presumably, would John Roll, the federal judge who was killed. Such a law would not however have protected Christina-Taylor Green, the 9 year old, nor any of the other “civilians” who were grocery shopping that day.
What’s come from Congress so far is a lot of calls for things that would make its members safer, but not one thing that might offer greater protection for the rest of us. Specifically, I have not seen one congress person suggest that maybe it’s time to rethink how ridiculously easy it is for anyone to become the proud possessor of a deadly weapon.
The “third rail” reason no politician wants to take the obvious step is of course the National Rifle Association. The NRA bases its mindless opposition to ANY form of weapon restriction on the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Wayne LaPierre and his NRA cohorts recently welcomed Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative Court cohorts into their bed. They did that as a consequence of D.C. v Heller, in which a 5-4 decision ruled Washington’s prohibition of gun ownership a violation of the Second Amendment and hence unconstitutional. This effectively made any future imposition of a federal ban on guns impossible, but in practical terms, its more important impact was to make it impossible for any local government to do so.
As I noted in my last blog, arriving at that conclusion required throwing out 200 years of jurisprudence which had said clearly that the Second Amendment did not—and was never intended to—grant a right to private gun ownership. The way in which Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, tiptoed around that inconvenience is fascinating. Here’s the relevant section of his opinion:
The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory
clause and its operative clause. The former does not limit the latter
grammatically, but rather announces a purpose.
Let’s stop there for a moment and examine Scalia’s contention. The Second Amendment 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.” Grammatically, the use of commas to set off the phrase “being necessary . . .” make it an appositional phrase, the only purpose of which grammatically can be to limit the thing to which it is in apposition. Grammatically, setting that phrase in apposition to “militia" does precisely what Scalia says it doesn't do--make the first clause the contingency upon which the second clause depends. The first clause does not in other words “announce a purpose,” it establishes a condition upon which the need for a second clause is based.
Scalia is perhaps not so ill-schooled in grade school grammar that he doesn’t know that, so he tries to slide around it by concluding as follows:
The Amendment could be rephrased {emphasis mine}, “Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Presumably, when the Constitution doesn’t say what you want it to say, if you are a Supreme Court Justice, you can simply rewrite it. But even rewording the Amendment doesn’t justify the conclusion Scalia and his four mates reached. Whether the purpose of a right to own guns is to insure a well-regulated militia or the condition upon which that right rests is the need for a well-regulated militia, the fact is that—since 1903 at least—we have neither had a militia nor needed one.
If you simply read the Amendment the way it was written, those two facts abrogate a right to keep arms. Even if you allow Scalia to rewrite the Amendment, however, the lack of a militia negates the purpose served by allowing citizens to bear arms.
Unless one of the Court’s hardcore conservative activists dies or resigns in the near future, there is not going to be an outright ban on private gun ownership. What the Tucson horror could (should?) prompt lawmakers to do is look at ways in which the lethality of gun ownership could be mitigated.
The most obvious, and necessary, such restriction would be to make possession of any semi-automatic or automatic weapon anywhere a felony that carries a hefty sentence. No one needs a Glock 9 or an AK-47 for target practice or shooting quail, nor do they need it to go to the grocery. Making possession of such a weapon in public a highly-sentenced felony would allow police to take criminals and deranged people carrying such weapons off the streets even if they hadn’t used them yet. That would at least partially answer the NRA shibboleth about “if guns are made criminal, only criminals will have guns.” They may have them, but they’d have to use them from inside a federal prison.
In line with that restriction, it should be made unlawful to manufacture or sell any ammunition that could be fired from a semi-automatic or automatic weapon, except to authorized military or law enforcement agencies. Bullets are pretty easy to conceal, so how would that be enforced? By coding every bullet so that if one is used, it can be traced directly to the manufacturer. Ammunition manufacturers, hit with civil or even criminal charges every time one of their bullets is fired from an illicit weapon would soon decide it was in their best interest to be very solicitous about to whom they sell.
Supporting that restriction, it should also be made illegal to manufacture or sell the clips semi-automatic and automatic weapons require—again except for police or military use. Absolutely, the extended clips, like the one Laughner used, which carry 30 rounds, should be banned.
The NRA would argue of course that restrictions like those listed above would keep law-abiding citizens from having lethal weapons, but not criminals. In the short term that’s true. In the long term, however, restricting sale of such weapons and ammunition and clips to government agencies, would have the effect of taking them away from criminals as well. It doesn’t do much good to have a Glock if you have no bullets to put in it. The fact that it might take a decade or longer to rid the streets of weapons with no purpose other than killing human beings is really not an argument against doing it. If anything, it makes doing it soon even more important.
A mandatory two week “waiting period” should be put in place, so that a weapon could not be physically possessed for at least two weeks after it is purchased. That would allow time for thorough background checks, which, in Laughner’s case, would almost certainly have turned up evidence of mental/emotional problems. Most importantly, that provision should be applied to “gun shows” as well as to licensed gun dealers. The fact that anyone can walk into a gun show, approach a booth that may be selling stolen weapons, plop down some cash and walk out 30 minutes later with a Kalyshnikov is ridiculous. The total lack of restriction on gun shows makes it easy for criminals to “launder” weapons, and equally easy for maniacs to purchase them. Beyond the waiting period, gun shows should be required to run background checks on every vendor they allow to set up shop, and be required to insure that every weapon being offered for sale is a legal weapon.
It should be illegal to conceal any firearm. Whether you are carrying it or driving with it, it should be in plain view. Anyone walking or driving in a public area with a firearm should be required to have his/her license to own that firearm immediately available to law enforcement. Failure to produce a license upon demand should be a felony offense.
None of these suggestions would in any way impinge on a hunter’s right to keep a shotgun or a hunting rifle, nor a homeowner’s right to keep a non-automatic weapon in his house for protection. What they would do, over time, is substantially reduce or nearly eliminate the tens of thousands of gun-related deaths that are suffered in this country every year. Granted a good number of those deaths are the result of thugs shooting at thugs about which it’s not hard to say good riddance; but far too many of them are 9 year old children attending a town hall because they are fascinated by politics. Wouldn't it be nice if our congressmen would show as much concern for them as they do for themselves?
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