Free Republic

Citing concern over the "sinister uses" of guns, University of Toronto officials are closing down their 88-year-old shooting range. No word yet on the fate of the university's chemistry labs. More than just one more example of political correctness run amok (which of course it is), I take this gesture as academic ideologues' invitation to government to follow suit and ban gun sport and gun collecting nationally. Alas, I think the initiative might find broad public support. To many liberal Canadians nowadays, tolerating gun use in any capacity is akin to complicity in Bambi's mother's murder, fatalism regarding school massacres...

Where does the federal government get its Constitutional authority to enact laws such as the National Firearms Act, which has been codified to Chapter 44 of Title 18 of the United States Code? Upon whom are such laws operative, and where? Since a careful reading of the Constitution reveals that the federal government has no specifically delegated authority to regulate firearms, from where does the federal government's authority to regulate firearms come? One would think with the high number of Americans supporting the right to keep and bear arms, this question is one that would be of some concern. We've...