Gang of 47: Professors oppose Second Amendment

Mr. Charlton Heston
President
National Rifle Association of America
11250 Waples Mill Rd.
Fairfax, Virginia 22030

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.

Academic Endorsers of the Letter to Charlton Heston Regarding the Second Amendment:

The biggie on their list of 47 is Larry Tribe, the prominent constitutional lawyer whose viewpoint is generally slanted leftward. Tribe finally visited the 2A issue and found, to his credit, that it does indeed mean what it says, i.e., it is an individual right, much as Prof. Sanford Levinson did. He (and Levinson) immediately qualified this by declaring the usual no right is ever absolute, can't cry 'fire' in a crowded theater, reasonable regs may be applied for the greater good, yada, yada.

I seem to recall the NRA mentioning this, more in a passing manner, as Tribe is a well-respected darling of the left-leaning mainstream, and even with his backtracking caveats, this was an eye opener. But the NRA would never continue to trot out Tribe's conclusions.

Most of the others the NRA wouldn't mention, except in the context of e.g., shredding dishonest 'scholarship' a la hack historian Bellesiles. Pfft!

Only God grants rights.

You are preaching to the choir. I've been doing the gun rights thing for 25 years. Gun Control is just a sympton of the disease.

What you need to understand is, with few exceptions (Justice Thomas being one and Rep. Ron Paul another) the policy makers and judiciary, IOW Our Leaders, believe that the Constitution has, in the words of Justice Blackmun, "Umbras and penumbras" (please excuse the run on sentence). Major and minor shadows. These shadows are used to gleam new meanings from an un-changing document.

Because of this the Constitution is now little more than a symbol, its meaning changing at a politician's whim. You want an example? We were attached on Sept. 11th an attack worse that Pearl Harbor. Yet we fight a war and are not Legally or Constitutionally "at war". New security laws, including present RICO and some wire-tapping powers are as clearly Un-Constitutional as the banning of handguns from D.C.

Since "both sides" in Washington benefit from this arrangement and, equally important, since the People could give a damn, nothing can or will be done to restore the Constitution. But keep trying, miracles happen.

Don't abbreviate this list of traitors. They qualify as much as bin Laden himself as completely and utterly fanatical enemies of liberty.

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
5. Jeff Brand Professor of Law University of San Francisco School of Law
6. John L. Brooke Stern Professor of American History Tufts University
7. Edwin G. Burrows Professor of History Brooklyn College
8. Richard M. Buxbaum Professor of Law Boalt Hall School of Law
9. Andrew Cayton Professor of History Miami University
10. Erwin Chemerinsky Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics and Political Science University of Southern California Law School
11. Saul Cornell Associate Professor of History Ohio State University
12. Edward Countryman University Distinguished Professor Southern Methodist University
13. Michael C. Dorf Professor of Law Columbia University
14. Norman Dorsen Stokes Professor of Law New York University School of Law
15. David R. Dow George Butler Research Professor of Law University of Houston Law Center
16. Robert R. Dykstra Professor of History and Public Policy State University of New York (SUNY) Albany
17. Susan Estrich Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science University of Southern California Law School
18. Heidi Feldman Associate Professor of Law Georgetown Professor of Law
19. Don Higginbotham Dowd Professor of History University of North Carolina
20. Peter Hoffer Research Professor of History University of Georgia
21. N.E.H. Hull Distinguished Professor of Law and History Rutgers University, Camden
22. Nancy Isenberg Associate Professor of History University of Northern Iowa
23. Yale Kamisar Clarence Darrow Distinguished University Professor University of Michigan Law School
24. Michael Kammen Professor of American History and Culture Cornell University
25. Stanley Katz Professor in Public and International Affairs Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
26. David M. Kennedy Donald I. McLachlan Professor of History Stanford University
27. Christopher Kutz Associate Professor of Law Boalt Hall School of Law
28. Jill Lepore Associate Professor of History Boston University
29. Jan Lewis Professor of History Rutgers University, Newark
30. Rory Little Professor of Law Hastings College of Law
31. Ronald Mann Professor of Law University of Michigan Law School
32. Mari Matsuda Professor of Law Georgetown University Law Center
33. Andrew J. McClurg Nadine H. Baum Distinguished Professor of Law University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Law
34. Mary Beth Norton Mary Donlon Professor of American History Cornell University
35. Michael L. Perlin Professor of Law New York Law School
36. Jack Rakove Coe Professor of History and American Studies Stanford University
37. Peter M. Shane Professor of Law University of Pittsburgh School of Law
38. Billy Smith Professor of History Montana State University, Bozeman
39. Laurence H. Tribe Ralph S. Tyler, Jr., Professor of Constitutional Law Harvard Law School
40. Richard Uviller Professor of Law Columbia Law School
41. Charles D. Weisselberg Professor of Law Boalt Hall School of Law
42. Robin West Professor of Law Georgetown University Law Center
43. Welsh S. White Professor of Law University of Pittsburgh
44. William M. Wiecek Conadon Professor of Public Law and Professor of History Syracuse University College of Law
45. Gary Wills Adjunct Professor of History Northwestern University
46. David Yassky Assistant Professor of Law Brooklyn Law School
47. Michael Zuckerman Professor of History University of Pennsylvania

My one and only question to these pseudo-academics is:

"Who ya gonna send to get my firearms, BOY?"

I doubt these liberal panty-boys will be out in body armor and assault rifles. I guess they figure the cops and military will.

Wrong.

PC and anti-Second Amendment rhetoric is dead after 11 SEP 01.

There is barely a mention of it.

Bellesiles is in the process of getting his lying a$$ kicked out of tenure since his book is being shown to be almost a complete fabrication.

prambo

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