Thanks for this clear summary of the historic legal framework of guns in America today. A clear summary about how to enact the actions listed at the end of the essay to prevent gun violence would also be helpful.
Last July I faced off in a Braver Angels debate with a Second Amendment absolutist on the following topic: "Colorado’s gun control laws unfairly infringe on personal freedoms."
1. The incumbent representatives of the Colorado House districts for which Michael and I are running – HD45 and HD39, respectively – have introduced a bill to repeal all of Colorado's gun safety laws.
2. As I explained during the debate last July, Justice Scalia in his majority Heller decision and Justice Alito in his majority McDonald decision both affirmed the Constitutional propriety of gun safety laws. An excerpt from my write up appears below the tildes.
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Second Amendment absolutists focus on the last four words of the Second Amendment: shall not be infringed. They would have us believe that any gun safety law by its very existence unfairly infringes upon one’s individual right to keep and bear arms.
Listen, though, to the authors of the majority opinions in Heller and McDonald.
Here is Justice Scalia 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.***
.
Here is Justice Samuel Alito in McDonald:
***It is important to keep in mind that Heller, while striking down a law that prohibited the possession of handguns in the home, recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.
We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, 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.***
.
We have many gun safety laws on the books in Colorado. Perhaps an exhaustive review of them would point up some particular provisions of some of those laws that arguably are overdone and have gone too far. On the whole, I find them to be fair-minded and consistent with a principle that drew unanimous support among the justices in Heller and McDonald: regulation of firearms is appropriate.
Thanks for this clear summary of the historic legal framework of guns in America today. A clear summary about how to enact the actions listed at the end of the essay to prevent gun violence would also be helpful.
Last July I faced off in a Braver Angels debate with a Second Amendment absolutist on the following topic: "Colorado’s gun control laws unfairly infringe on personal freedoms."
One can watch and/or read our respective remarks and responses to questions in my write up of that encounter here: https://decencyandsense.substack.com/p/braver-debate
Two points:
1. The incumbent representatives of the Colorado House districts for which Michael and I are running – HD45 and HD39, respectively – have introduced a bill to repeal all of Colorado's gun safety laws.
2. As I explained during the debate last July, Justice Scalia in his majority Heller decision and Justice Alito in his majority McDonald decision both affirmed the Constitutional propriety of gun safety laws. An excerpt from my write up appears below the tildes.
~~~~~~~
Second Amendment absolutists focus on the last four words of the Second Amendment: shall not be infringed. They would have us believe that any gun safety law by its very existence unfairly infringes upon one’s individual right to keep and bear arms.
Listen, though, to the authors of the majority opinions in Heller and McDonald.
Here is Justice Scalia 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.***
.
Here is Justice Samuel Alito in McDonald:
***It is important to keep in mind that Heller, while striking down a law that prohibited the possession of handguns in the home, recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.
We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, 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.***
.
We have many gun safety laws on the books in Colorado. Perhaps an exhaustive review of them would point up some particular provisions of some of those laws that arguably are overdone and have gone too far. On the whole, I find them to be fair-minded and consistent with a principle that drew unanimous support among the justices in Heller and McDonald: regulation of firearms is appropriate.
Thorough, timely, wise. Read it!