Posted on 02/05/2007 8:15:23 AM PST by kiriath_jearim
On New Year’s Eve, my friend and rowing teammate was killed by a gun in Dunbar. Regardless of who pulled the trigger, I blame the gun.
Guns were invented with the specific purpose to kill. People were not. Disturbed people pull triggers, but do not directly send speeding bullets through people’s skin and souls. My friend, University of Charleston alumna Lori Francis, is no longer living because she couldn’t stop the bullet that ended her life.
I wrote the Gazette in 2003 regarding a shooting at my graduate college, the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia. Ironically, I finished that submission two hours before I rode my bicycle toward my Lee St. apartment, past the Kanawha County Board of Education building, which was suffering after-affects of another school shooting. For the second time in two years, a former teacher of mine was shot.
I used to think school shootings followed me. But now, I realize that school shootings rather follow a national trend that shows no signs of slowing. It does not slow because the only solution is one that makes the most sense — but sounds the most ridiculous.
In my 2003 submission, I called for abolition of guns. I cited school and workplace shootings initiated by disturbed people, but concluded by bullets. I continue to call for the abolition of guns for the same reason that left my friend and her parents dead in their Dunbar apartment: Americans are in love with guns and are not brave enough to part with them.
The constitutionality of possible gun abolition would be an issue with many Americans who are law-abiding gun owners. But it is the courts that interpret the Constitution, not the popular vote. The Second Amendment states: “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.” In United States v. Miller, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted this provision to mean that citizens do not have an individual right to bear arms unless they possess “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.”
In United States v. Warin, the Sixth Circuit provided more context to this interpretation, stating: “Since the Second Amendment ... applies only to the right of the state to maintain a militia and not to the individual’s right to bear arms, there can be no serious claim to any express constitutional right to possess a firearm.” Neither Miller nor Warin has been overruled.
My distant ancestor, Major Gen. Ambrose Burnside, was the first president of the National Rifle Association. Gen. Burnside would have liked Lori Francis. He would have liked her heart and passion. Gen. Burnside would not like, however, what his organization has become and what it promotes. The NRA was founded by some old Army officers disappointed by their soldier’s marksmanship skills. Its purpose was “providing firearms training and encouraging interest in the shooting sports.” It is now a gun-promoting juggernaut that appears to suggest that teachers should be armed to combat the growing number of school shootings. I don’t think my ancestor would approve of the NRA’s solution to stopping violence in America today.
In the late 1990s, you may have seen Lori Francis rowing on the Kanawha River. She rowed hard and never complained. She rowed on a lightweight crew but had a heavyweight heart. She rowed with a peaceful fluidity. Lori will never row again as her dreams were cut short because of a gun. In 2007, more innocent people like Lori will die in West Virginia because of other guns. There will be several school and workplace shootings in 2007. People will die in those shootings because of guns. As usual, no one with power and influence will offer any solutions other than arming more people with more guns.
It’s about time the coxswains of our government do something about the guns that are shooting holes in the boat they command, which we call America. As they continue to promote more guns for more crime, our vessel of prosperity and peace continues to sink. How much longer can stubbornness for a misguided view of the Second Amendment keep us afloat? Sadly, not long enough for our society to ever row like Lori did.
[Burnside is a trial lawyer in Cleveland. He graduated from the University of Charleston in 1999 and was an employee of the West Virginia Senate and Kanawha County Public Defender’s Office.]
I'm curious to know just when, in young Jeremy's skull full of mush, personal responsibility and accountability begins to enter the equation. Somebody should swat him in the @$$ with a Louisville Slugger and tell him it was the bat's fault.
Abraham Lincoln
Hmmm, concidering Lincoln was shot . . . Was this quote the correct choice?
What did JW Booth say when he shot him?
"Sic Semper Tyrannis (thus always to tyrants)"
Nothing like a little irony in your diet.
Notice how many more of these articles there are since Demoncrats took over the Senate and House?
Read it again. This idiot lawyer, and I, are talking about the Constitution, as are the cases I mentioned.
Who do you appeal to once the SCOTUS has ruled? As I said, when the "Anointed Nine" make their decrees, it IS the law.
And you can disagree with the SCOTUS all you want. But do you know what you call someone who refuses to submit to the decrees of the SCOTUS? Either "prisoner" or "cadaver."
Mark
Evidently the murderer was not responsible for either the murders or the suicide, rather it was clearly the fault of the gun.
Not keeping your pants zippered kills more people annually than guns ever could.
CHASTITY BELTS FOR EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!
As a first sentence, this writer is thoughtful. saved me the trouble of reading further.
According to Captain Obvious, regardless of why guns (and knives, and baseball bats and chainsaws and cars) were invented, our Constitution guarantees me the right to "keep and bear" any of the above.
Strange as it may sound, the Framers of our Country's laws actually knew the difference berween pistols, and muskets, and firearms, and tire irons...
Well, maybe not tire irons.
Well does anyone know how many words he used to attack the broken system that let the shooter in the county to begin with. I would bet not one!
You're not treating 'em right.
I took my guns out shooting last Saturday. Delivered a bunch of led into steel targets at the Riverbend Gunclub "Cowboy Town." Not one of 'em tried to a shoot a person, though Marlin did have misfeed that cost me a clean sweep... (a very slow clean sweep, admittedly...).
As for this guy, maybe Burnside wasn't much of General, but I bet he'd be horrified at what his descendents have become...
"I'm An Idiot, Please Lock Me Up" by Jeremy M. Burnside.
To summarize the author's mindset,
"The only way to change the will of others is to get them to change their will, then we don't have to worry about them changing their will.
If that doesn't work, then just outlaw anything they might use to implement their will on others.
Ultimately we must outlaw law!" /reductio ad absurbum off
Yeah, here is what I want from these "heros". When you publish some screed like this, include your address, your home address. Additionally, post a sign on your lawn. "No Firearms In This House".
Think they will?
I read that article in the paper yesterday morning..The faulty lapses in logic and patrician liberal thinking are so intense, they made my nose bleed.
His attitude is, screw the people if they dont want their guns confiscated, we know better than they do what is good for them.
And he has no real understanding of Miller...btw..
And several jugs of holy water. ( garlic and wooden stakes optional)
This is such a blatant call to violence, almost an incitement, that it would be very useful to know when and where Abraham Lincoln made that statement.
Personally I am skeptical.
No, I have not read everything that Lincoln wrote and uttered...
But I am certain that repeating words genuinely uttered or written by Lincoln cound never be characterized as "criminal".
"People were not."
Cain and Able.
This hyper-emotional idiot graduated law school? What do they teach there?
Oh, for the days before firearms, when nobody ever died!
Every citizen is considered guilty for not filing an income tax return and, unless each proves otherwise individually, all 300 million of them, he is assumed liable for the highest tax rate possible on all income, and assumed to have no deductions.
What could be more absurd and difficult to implement than that? Yet that is the law of the land, applied constantly, every day.
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