Posted on 10/16/2001 9:01:58 AM PDT by Kevin Curry
An Open Letter to the NRA
March 27, 2000
Mr. Charlton Heston
President
National Rifle Association of America
11250 Waples Mill Rd.
Fairfax, Virginia 22030
Dear Mr. Heston,
We are law professors and historians who have a deep interest in the Second Amendment and its implications for the regulation of guns and of gun ownership. Our politics run the gamut. But we are united on the vital importance of putting to rest any misperception that the Second Amendment prohibits a wide range of effective and reasonable firearms regulations.
There is room for debate about which firearms policies will best serve Americans. But the law is well-settled that the Second Amendment permits broad and intensive regulation of firearms, including laws that ban certain types of weapons, require safety devices on others, mandate registration and licensing and otherwise impose strict regulatory oversight of the firearms industry. These and similar regulations are fully consistent with the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment quoted in full states that 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. The United States Supreme Court and every federal appellate court to consider the issue have held that the Second Amendment permits a wide range of reasonable gun control laws. And although academic views differ regarding whether the Second Amendment does more than protect the state militia from being disarmed by federal law, we all agree that the Amendment plainly permits reasonable firearms regulations including those set forth above.
The National Rifle Association’s repeated suggestions that the Second Amendment somehow stands in the way of effective and reasonable regulation of guns and gun ownership is a distortion of legal precedent and a disservice to all Americans, the great majority of whom support thoughtful firearms policies. The issue at hand transcends the liberal/conservative divide: prominent conservatives like the late Chief Justice Warren Burger and the late Solicitor General Erwin Griswold allied themselves against the NRA’s overbroad reading of the Second Amendment. Moreover, as this letter makes clear, it is false and misleading for the NRA to cite any of us or our scholarship as authority for the notion that the Second Amendment prohibits reasonable regulation of the manufacture, transfer, ownership and possession of guns.
We encourage you and your supporters to focus on the real issue facing our country and it isn’t the Second Amendment. The central issue on which we all should focus is what sort of firearms legislation and policies will best prevent the killings and violence that plague our country today.
Sincerely,
(see attached list of endorsers)
cc: Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice-President
Academic Endorsers of the Letter to Charlton Heston Regarding the Second Amendment:
1. Akhil Reed Amar Southmayd Professor of Law Yale Law School On leave of absence, spring term, 2000.
2. Edward Ayers Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History University of Virginia
3. Michael Bellesiles Professor of History Emory University
4. Carl T. Bogus Professor of Law Roger Williams University Law School
et al
My interest was piqued when a friend informed me that signer Professor Akhil Reed Amar has been invited to bash the Second Amendment at the University of Utah Law School on October 25 at 7 PM. There is no reason to suspect that his apparent Middle-Eastern ancestry has anything to do with his anti-Second Amendment position, but because of his name his speech is likely to draw more interest than it would have prior to Septmeber 11.
Maybe the good FReepers of Utah should think about showing up to FReep the good Professor Amar (who was also one of Clinton's most vigorous defenders in academia during the impeachment debacle).
Note: I have no prior knowledge of "Viking Phoenix" or its other positions. I merely pulled this letter from its site. This same letter might have been pulled from any of a number of sites.
LOL.
You bet. All the way from Ted Kennedy to Sarah Brady. Thanks for the laugh.
Meanwhile, gun sales are up over 500%...
Yes, some of us are Maoists, some Stalinists, some are Leninists, and some of us are adherents of Trotsky. Oh and yes, some of us are just out and out Fascists. And I musn't forget those of us who are devout followers of Sartre.
Apparently plain English is beyond the ken of these 'professors'.
L
The same Bellisiles whose data suggeting minimal historical firearms ownership in the U.S. has been so publicly revealed as completely fabricated? The same professor, who even the Boston Globe has denounced as a charlatan? This is who Carl T. Bogus and friends are aligning themselves.
Birds of a feather...
Even so august a conservative personage as Judge Bork is on the record as saying the 2nd Amendment does not confer a right of a individual to posess firearms.
It is not your grandfather's Constitution and the current crisis will ensure that when all is said and done it won't be our Constitution either.
Mourn the Republic
1776-2001
How hard is it to understand?
Well, then it need to become unsettled.
I never have, nor will I ever register a single one of my weapons, any more than I have ever had to "register" to avail myself of any other right under the Bill Of Rights. And as the government, or this august body of professors disagrees, they can simply go to hell.
Register abortions, where by Constitutional fiat, the demise of a life is a fait accompli. Not the gun, where it is merely assumed.
So, did you ever manage to dry out that "evidence" of yours? If so, where is it? Burned in a fire? Lost in the mail? The dog ate it?
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