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Mischief-Maker Ashcroft Asserts Right to Bear Arms
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Mischief-Maker Ashcroft Asserts Right to Bear Arms
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May 9, 2002
Attorney General John Ashcroft has quietly dropped a bombshell in the legal and political war over gun control. In a stealth attack on the constitutional underpinnings of laws regulating firearms, his Justice Department has climbed into bed with gun buffs who argue that the right to bear arms applies to individuals, not just to members of state militias.
That assertion, buried in footnotes in briefs filed this week with the Supreme Court, reverses six decades of federal policy and runs counter to legal precedent. Justice Department lawyers did not directly challenge the government's authority to regulate gun ownership, but gun buffs will be happy to do that if the Supreme Court takes this opportunity to revisit its reading of the Second Amendment. The court should leave this settled law settled.
The government briefs were filed in two cases involving gun arrests. In one, an Oklahoma man convicted of possessing machine guns argued that the Second Amendment guarantees his right to own automatic weapons. In the second case, a Texas man argued that under the Second Amendment, authorities could not take away his right to a handgun just because he was the subject of the court order of protection granted to his estranged wife.
Justice Department lawyers said in the legal briefs that the ban on automatic weapons and the domestic-protection prohibition are reasonable restrictions on the right to bear arms. But if the court accepts their interpretation of the Second Amendment as giving individuals the right to bear arms, the reasonableness of every law on the books that restricts gun ownership would be subject to challenge.
"When it comes to guns, this is the biggest shift in policy we've seen in decades," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). Worse still, "it was done undercover." There is nothing of value to be gained from revisiting long-settled fundamental principles when it comes to guns, but because of Ashcroft's pursuit of his ideological agenda, that's just what could be in the offing.
Copyright c 2002, Newsday, Inc. http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpgun092699549may09.story
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Email this story
Printer friendly format
May 9, 2002
Attorney General John Ashcroft has quietly dropped a bombshell in the legal and political war over gun control. In a stealth attack on the constitutional underpinnings of laws regulating firearms, his Justice Department has climbed into bed with gun buffs who argue that the right to bear arms applies to individuals, not just to members of state militias.
That assertion, buried in footnotes in briefs filed this week with the Supreme Court, reverses six decades of federal policy and runs counter to legal precedent. Justice Department lawyers did not directly challenge the government's authority to regulate gun ownership, but gun buffs will be happy to do that if the Supreme Court takes this opportunity to revisit its reading of the Second Amendment. The court should leave this settled law settled.
The government briefs were filed in two cases involving gun arrests. In one, an Oklahoma man convicted of possessing machine guns argued that the Second Amendment guarantees his right to own automatic weapons. In the second case, a Texas man argued that under the Second Amendment, authorities could not take away his right to a handgun just because he was the subject of the court order of protection granted to his estranged wife.
Justice Department lawyers said in the legal briefs that the ban on automatic weapons and the domestic-protection prohibition are reasonable restrictions on the right to bear arms. But if the court accepts their interpretation of the Second Amendment as giving individuals the right to bear arms, the reasonableness of every law on the books that restricts gun ownership would be subject to challenge.
"When it comes to guns, this is the biggest shift in policy we've seen in decades," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). Worse still, "it was done undercover." There is nothing of value to be gained from revisiting long-settled fundamental principles when it comes to guns, but because of Ashcroft's pursuit of his ideological agenda, that's just what could be in the offing.
Copyright c 2002, Newsday, Inc. http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpgun092699549may09.story
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878