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A Faulty Rethinking of the 2nd Amendment
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
A Faulty Rethinking of the 2nd Amendment
By JACK RAKOVE
TANFORD, Calif.?-?The Bush administration has found a constitutional right it wants to expand. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft attracted only mild interest a year ago when he told the National Rifle Association, "The text and original intent of the Second Amendment clearly protect the right of individuals to keep and bear firearms."
Now, briefs just filed by Solicitor General Theodore Olson in two cases currently being appealed to the Supreme Court indicate that Mr. Ashcroft's personal opinion has become that of the United States government. This posture represents an astonishing challenge to the long-settled doctrine that the right to bear arms protected by the Second Amendment is closely tied to membership in the militia.
It is no secret that controversy about the meaning of the amendment has escalated in recent years. As evidence grew that a significant portion of the American electorate favored the regulation of firearms, the N.R.A. and its allies insisted ever more vehemently that the private right to possess arms is a constitutional absolute. This opinion, once seen as marginal, has become an article of faith on the right, and Republican politicians have in turn had to acknowledge its force.
The two cases under appeal do not offer an ideal test of the administration's new views. One concerns a man charged with violating a federal statute prohibiting individuals under domestic violence restraining orders from carrying guns; the other involves a man convicted of owning machine guns, which is illegal under federal law. In both cases, the defendants cite the Second Amendment as protecting their right to have the firearms. The unsavory facts may explain why Mr. Olson is using these cases as vehicles to announce the administration's constitutional position while urging the Supreme Court not to accept the appeals.
The court last examined this issue in 1939 in United States v. Miller. There it held that the Second Amendment was designed to ensure the effectiveness of the militia, not to guarantee a private right to possess firearms. The Miller case, though it did not fully explore the entire constitutional history, has guided the government's position on firearm issues for the past six decades.
If the court were to take up the two cases on appeal, it is far from clear that the Justice Department's new position would prevail. The plain text of the Second Amendment - "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" - does not support the unequivocal view that Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Olson have put forth. The amendment refers to the right of the people, rather than the individual person of the Fifth Amendment. And the phrase "keep and bear arms" is, as most commentators note, a military reference.
Nor do the debates surrounding the adoption of the amendment support the idea that the framers were thinking of an individual right to own arms. The relevant proposals offered by the state ratification conventions of 1787-88 all dealt with the need to preserve the militia as an alternative to a standing army. The only recorded discussion of the amendment in the House of Representatives concerned whether religious dissenters should be compelled to serve in the militia. And in 1789, the Senate deleted one clause explicitly defining the militia as "composed of the body of the people." In excising this phrase, the Senate gave "militia" a narrower meaning than it otherwise had, thereby making the Ashcroft interpretation harder to sustain.
Advocates of the individual right respond to these objections in three ways.
They argue, first, that when Americans used the word militia, they ordinarily meant the entire adult male population capable of bearing arms. But Article I of the Constitution defines the militia as an institution under the joint regulation of the national and state governments, and the debates of 1787-89 do not demonstrate that the framers believed that the militia should forever be synonymous with the entire population.
A second argument revolves around the definition of "the people." Those on the N.R.A. side believe "the people" means "all persons." But in Article I we also read that the people will elect the House of Representatives - and the determination of who can vote will be left to state law, in just the way that militia service would remain subject to Congressional and state regulation.
The third argument addresses the critical phrase deleted in the Senate. Rather than concede that the Senate knew what it was doing, these commentators contend that the deletion was more a matter of careless editing.
This argument is faulty because legal interpretation generally assumes that lawmakers act with clear purpose. More important, the Senate that made this critical deletion was dominated by Federalists who were skeptical of the militia's performance during the Revolutionary War and opposed to the idea that the future of American defense lay with the militia rather than a regular army. They had sound reasons not to commit the national government to supporting a mass militia, and thus to prefer a phrasing implying that the militia need not embrace the entire adult male population if Congress had good reason to require otherwise. The evidence of text and history makes it very hard to argue for an expansive individual right to keep arms.
There is one striking curiosity to the Bush administration's advancing its position at this time. Advocates of the individual-right interpretation typically argue that an armed populace is the best defense against the tyranny of our own government. And yet the Bush administration seems quite willing to compromise essential civil liberties in the name of security. It is sobering to think that the constitutional right the administration values so highly is the right to bear arms, that peculiar product of an obsolete debate over the danger of standing armies - and this at a time when our standing army is the most powerful the world has known.
Jack Rakove is a professor of history and political science at Stanford Uni versity and the author of ``Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/opinion/12RAKO.html
"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
By JACK RAKOVE
TANFORD, Calif.?-?The Bush administration has found a constitutional right it wants to expand. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft attracted only mild interest a year ago when he told the National Rifle Association, "The text and original intent of the Second Amendment clearly protect the right of individuals to keep and bear firearms."
Now, briefs just filed by Solicitor General Theodore Olson in two cases currently being appealed to the Supreme Court indicate that Mr. Ashcroft's personal opinion has become that of the United States government. This posture represents an astonishing challenge to the long-settled doctrine that the right to bear arms protected by the Second Amendment is closely tied to membership in the militia.
It is no secret that controversy about the meaning of the amendment has escalated in recent years. As evidence grew that a significant portion of the American electorate favored the regulation of firearms, the N.R.A. and its allies insisted ever more vehemently that the private right to possess arms is a constitutional absolute. This opinion, once seen as marginal, has become an article of faith on the right, and Republican politicians have in turn had to acknowledge its force.
The two cases under appeal do not offer an ideal test of the administration's new views. One concerns a man charged with violating a federal statute prohibiting individuals under domestic violence restraining orders from carrying guns; the other involves a man convicted of owning machine guns, which is illegal under federal law. In both cases, the defendants cite the Second Amendment as protecting their right to have the firearms. The unsavory facts may explain why Mr. Olson is using these cases as vehicles to announce the administration's constitutional position while urging the Supreme Court not to accept the appeals.
The court last examined this issue in 1939 in United States v. Miller. There it held that the Second Amendment was designed to ensure the effectiveness of the militia, not to guarantee a private right to possess firearms. The Miller case, though it did not fully explore the entire constitutional history, has guided the government's position on firearm issues for the past six decades.
If the court were to take up the two cases on appeal, it is far from clear that the Justice Department's new position would prevail. The plain text of the Second Amendment - "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" - does not support the unequivocal view that Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Olson have put forth. The amendment refers to the right of the people, rather than the individual person of the Fifth Amendment. And the phrase "keep and bear arms" is, as most commentators note, a military reference.
Nor do the debates surrounding the adoption of the amendment support the idea that the framers were thinking of an individual right to own arms. The relevant proposals offered by the state ratification conventions of 1787-88 all dealt with the need to preserve the militia as an alternative to a standing army. The only recorded discussion of the amendment in the House of Representatives concerned whether religious dissenters should be compelled to serve in the militia. And in 1789, the Senate deleted one clause explicitly defining the militia as "composed of the body of the people." In excising this phrase, the Senate gave "militia" a narrower meaning than it otherwise had, thereby making the Ashcroft interpretation harder to sustain.
Advocates of the individual right respond to these objections in three ways.
They argue, first, that when Americans used the word militia, they ordinarily meant the entire adult male population capable of bearing arms. But Article I of the Constitution defines the militia as an institution under the joint regulation of the national and state governments, and the debates of 1787-89 do not demonstrate that the framers believed that the militia should forever be synonymous with the entire population.
A second argument revolves around the definition of "the people." Those on the N.R.A. side believe "the people" means "all persons." But in Article I we also read that the people will elect the House of Representatives - and the determination of who can vote will be left to state law, in just the way that militia service would remain subject to Congressional and state regulation.
The third argument addresses the critical phrase deleted in the Senate. Rather than concede that the Senate knew what it was doing, these commentators contend that the deletion was more a matter of careless editing.
This argument is faulty because legal interpretation generally assumes that lawmakers act with clear purpose. More important, the Senate that made this critical deletion was dominated by Federalists who were skeptical of the militia's performance during the Revolutionary War and opposed to the idea that the future of American defense lay with the militia rather than a regular army. They had sound reasons not to commit the national government to supporting a mass militia, and thus to prefer a phrasing implying that the militia need not embrace the entire adult male population if Congress had good reason to require otherwise. The evidence of text and history makes it very hard to argue for an expansive individual right to keep arms.
There is one striking curiosity to the Bush administration's advancing its position at this time. Advocates of the individual-right interpretation typically argue that an armed populace is the best defense against the tyranny of our own government. And yet the Bush administration seems quite willing to compromise essential civil liberties in the name of security. It is sobering to think that the constitutional right the administration values so highly is the right to bear arms, that peculiar product of an obsolete debate over the danger of standing armies - and this at a time when our standing army is the most powerful the world has known.
Jack Rakove is a professor of history and political science at Stanford Uni versity and the author of ``Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/opinion/12RAKO.html
"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
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Engel in America
Matthew Engel
Tuesday May 14, 2002
The Guardian
The most famous of the 27 amendments to the US constitution is probably the fifth, which gives people the right to avoid self-incrimination. Americans plead it regularly, thus effectively incriminating themselves. Journalists are particularly attached to the first, which enshrines freedom of the press, giving them a place in society way above that of raggedy-arsed British hacks, and thus usually too grand to make any worthwhile use of the privilege.
The most bewildering is the second amendment. This is the one that makes Europeans cease thinking of Americans as much-loved cousins and regard them instead as refugees from a distant planet. It reads: "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 excess commas are grammatically puzzling, but not nearly as puzzling as the whole sentence. Americans have argued since 1791 what their founding fathers actually meant. You would have thought the federal government had a view, though. It does. It just happens to be different from the one it held this time last week.
For decades, the official Justice Department line was that the first 13 words of the amendment were crucial to its sense, and that the amendment was designed to protect the existence of official militias, eg the individual states' National Guard, and not to allow all-comers to roam the streets packing a rod.
Last week, Ted Olson, the solicitor-general, announced a change of mind. He said the US now believed the amendment "more broadly protects the right of individuals - to possess and bear their own firearms". Olson was speaking for John Ashcroft who has believed this for years, in common with a great many other people who in other countries would be called rightwing extremists. Ashcroft, however, is now the US attorney general, and he first signalled the change a year ago, in a letter to the chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, the gung-ho gun-carriers. This gives you some idea how business is transacted in George W's Washington.
In the short run, thanks to the checks and balances elsewhere in the constitution, the change does not mean much. But it's possible that there could be a rethink by the supreme court, which last considered the second amendment, and decided it referred to militias, in 1939. The gun lobby has stopped this being translated into meaningful legislation, but the ruling has so far stopped complete mayhem. This president would love to pack the court with more rightwingers to add to the five who gifted him the presidency. And if the Republicans regain the Senate in November he may get his way. Then even the current inadequate patchwork of state gun control laws could be rendered illegal.
This Ashcroft is an unusual cove. He is a strict Pentecostalist, a sect that believes in exorcism, speaking in tongues, and, in some cases, handling poisonous snakes as a test of belief, which must be good practice for Washington politics. His old Senate colleagues disliked him so much that they nearly rejected him as attorney general.
But his popularity now outstrips that of any senator. He has used his department as a battering ram against terrorism, leading the charge with rasping denunciations of suspects and critics alike as traitors. Guardian readers offended by this might consider whether it makes political sense in the current American climate to err on the side of harshness or kindness in the matter of locking up dodgy-looking Arab males.
His gun policy is harder to fathom. Ashcroft may be a biblical fundamentalist, but he has a very different view of the constitution. Arguably, he has bent it enough since September 11, but the New Yorker noted recently that in six years as a senator he sponsored seven constitutional amendments which he wanted to add to the 17 passed in the previous two centuries, including bans on flag-burning and abortion, plus a plan to make the amendment process much easier.
So why is he so stuck on an interpretation of a 1791 law that even the Reagan administration rejected? Dunno. The traditional liberal theory of the second amendment is that the early Americans were conveying their distaste for professional armies, and aiming to protect the infant state by use of the armed citizen.
Professor Carl Bogus (sic) of the University of California has come up with a new and well-received thesis: that James Madison wrote it to reassure the whites of Virginia, who were desperate to retain their militia to avoid the possibility of a slave insurrection, and were scared the new federal Congress might help the slaves. If Bogus is right, Ashcroft is in pretty vile company - and wrong.
matthew.engel@guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,715154,00.html
"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
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 14, 2002
THE FIRST TEN AMENDMENTS to the United State Constitution, commonly called the Bill of Rights, were added to protect the rights of the individual American citizen. In the first blush of the new republic the meaning of any of those rights was crystal clear. The fact that all had been ignored or crushed by the soldiers of King George made them easy to understand. Yet time passed and newer generations forgot the tyranny of an English monarch. The rights became commonplace, taken for granted, and then slowly erosion began.
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Every amendment in the Bill of Rights was eroding. Then in the 1920s the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stood up for the First Amendment despite those who would try and curtail it. As a result the First Amendment has regained its former stature.
In the nineteen thirties the Second Amendment came under attack when violent mobsters using machine guns terrorized citizens in New York, Chicago, and other metropolitan areas. The carnage led to the first national gun control law enforced by the Treasury Department. Then it was the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy in the 1960s that resulted in more federal gun control laws being enacted.
In order to justify more and more restrictions on firearms the proponents put forth the notion that the Second Amendment, unlike all the other amendments, was not an individual right, but a collective one. An entire lobby and historical justification industry grew up around such a bogus idea.
Succeeding administrations and federal courts nurtured and propagated that myth. And with every succeeding heinous criminal act committed with a gun, the gun ban lobby added more and more laws.
Yet, those that supported the original meaning of the Second Amendment fought back. Historians and lawyers researched and wrote scholarly papers about the true intent of the founding fathers. With each passing year more and more scholars added to the body of knowledge that examined the roots of the Second Amendment leading to the inevitable conclusion that it was an individual right, not a collective right.
A week ago Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Bush Administration's point man on the Second Amendment, threw down the gauntlet to the gun banners. In footnotes to briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Bush Administration states, "The current position of the United States, however, is that the Second Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals, including persons who are not members of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to possess and bear their own firearms, subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse."
Law Professor Eugene Volokh explains in the Wall Street Journal that the government is "returning to a much broader consensus: the view, adopted throughout most of the nation's history, that the `right of the people to keep and bear arms' is as individual a right as `the right of the people to be secure ... against unreasonable searches and seizures' or `the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.'"
Yet the government's mild language has caused consternation beyond belief in the gun ban community and the mainstream media. The media has picked up the quote, "government position of more than 60 years" from the Violence Policy Center (VPC) and used it in story after story. VPC was the gun ban lobby that gave us the term "assault weapons" and helped craft the Clinton administration's policy to ban "assault weapons."
In editorial after editorial the media is trying to spin the story as Armageddon for gun control. Bill Press, who co-hosted Crossfire several years ago and screamed, "Guns, Guns, Guns" at me during an interview, wrote a diatribe against Ashcroft and the National Rifle Association. He calls Ashcroft a "dictator" and accuses him of a "shocking display of executive arrogance."
They have all ignored the fact that in both the Emerson vs. United States (see my article "Emerson Ruling Both Good and Bad for Gun Rights") and Haney vs. United States, the Bush administration has asked the court to turn down the appeals from both men. The Bush administration believes that the laws under which both men have been arrested and convicted were within the parameter of "reasonable restrictions" on the Second Amendment.
Why all the raucous and hysterical wailing and hand wringing? You see it's really not about gun restrictions; it's about banning guns. If the gun control lobby were really sincere about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, they would welcome the Bush administration policy, but there is no sincerity. The hysterical reaction is all about not being able to ban the private ownership of guns. Again and again their true intent becomes clearer: registration, gun bans, and finally confiscation. That's why they will oppose the Bush administration's policy with all their might. Under Bush, bans are not "reasonable restrictions."
Tanya K. Metaksa is the former executive director of the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action. She is the author of Safe, Not Sorry a self-protection manual, published in 1997. She has appeared on numerous talk and interview shows such as "Crossfire," the "Today" show, "Nightline," "This Week with David Brinkley" and the "McNeil-Lehrer Hour," among others.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/metaksa/2002/metaksa05-14-02.htm
"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
sing a footnote in a set of Supreme Court briefs, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a radical shift last week in six decades of government policy toward the rights of Americans to own guns. Burying the change in fine print cannot disguise the ominous implications for law enforcement or Mr. Ashcroft's betrayal of his public duty.
The footnote declares that, contrary to longstanding and bipartisan interpretation of the Second Amendment, the Constitution "broadly protects the rights of individuals" to own firearms. This view and the accompanying legal standard Mr. Ashcroft has suggested - equating gun ownership with core free speech rights - could make it extremely difficult for the government to regulate firearms, as it has done for decades.
That position comports with Mr. Ashcroft's long-held personal opinion, which he expressed a year ago in a letter to his close allies at the National Rifle Association. But it is a position at odds with both history and the Constitution's text. As the Supreme Court correctly concluded in a 1939 decision that remains the key legal precedent on the subject, the Second Amendment protects only those rights that have "some reasonable relationship to the preservation of efficiency of a well-regulated militia." By not viewing the amendment as a basic, individual right, this decision left room for broad gun ownership regulation. The footnote is also at odds with Mr. Ashcroft's pledge at his confirmation hearing that his personal ideology would not drive Justice Department legal policies.
It is hard to take seriously Mr. Ashcroft's assertion that the Bush administration remains committed to the vigorous defense and enforcement of all federal gun laws. Mr. Ashcroft, after all, is an official whose devotion to the gun lobby extends to granting its request to immediately destroy records of gun purchases amassed in the process of conducting Brady law background checks even though they might be useful for tracking weapons purchases by suspected terrorists.
The immediate effect of the Bush Justice Department's expansive reading of the Second Amendment is to undermine law enforcement by calling into question valuable state and federal gun restrictions on the books, and by handing dangerous criminals a potent new weapon for challenging their convictions. What it all adds up to is a gift to pro-gun extremists, and a shabby deal for everyone else.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/14/opinion/14TUE3.html
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"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
Tuesday, May 14, 2002
MICHAEL ZUZEL Columbian staff writer
e-mail address: michael.zuzel@columbian.com.
The next time a gun-rights advocate asserts that the Constitution guarantees an individual's unconditional right to bear arms, respond with a question: What kind of arms?
An M-1 tank?
A Blackhawk helicopter?
A thermonuclear warhead?
If the answer to all of these is "yes," then you're talking to a lunatic. Better change the subject. On second thought, run away.
If the answer to any of these is "no," however, then your friend has just admitted that the Second Amendment is not absolute after all. And at that point, the only real difference between the gun-rights stance and the gun-control position is where they draw the line.
It will be interesting to see where the Bush administration draws the line, now that its Justice Department, led by Attorney General John Ashcroft, has reversed six decades of federal policy and declared that the Second Amendment endows individuals, not just state militias, with the right to possess firearms.
The defining case on the subject is U.S. vs. Miller, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the latter clause of the Second Amendment ("the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed") is entirely dependent on its former clause ("a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State"). That was way back in 1939, and until now, with few exceptions, lower courts and, with no exceptions, presidential administrations have reached the same conclusion.
It's hard to see how the Bush team's sudden reinterpretation will make much difference. The current Supreme Court doesn't seem particularly eager to perform an about-face on gun rights. The White House acts terrified that the court might actually do the opposite and strengthen government's ability to regulate firearms. In the brief he filed last week, the administration's chief attorney, Solicitor General Theodore Olson, relegated the Justice Department's new view regarding the Second Amendment to a mere footnote and then practically begged the high court not to pass judgment on the issue.
Sort of like buying a Lotto ticket but hoping the ping-pong ball machine breaks down.
Even more revealing, Olson himself included a critical exception when he conceded that the right to bear arms must be "subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse."
So, even this pro-gun-rights administration admits the Second Amendment is not absolute. And never mind about tanks and nukes; Olson's little asterisk means the government can enforce existing federal laws that severely restrict fully automatic weapons and a number of semi-automatic assault rifles, prohibit the sale of firearms to convicted felons and to juveniles younger than 18, and require that gun dealers be licensed.
All of these laws "infringe" on the right of the people to keep and bear arms, but they're not unconstitutional. Only the National Rifle Association and its ilk pretend otherwise.
Put down the car keys, please
The NRA would have us believe that every restriction is unreasonable, that every common-sense gun law is another step on the road to confiscation of all weapons. That's possible, I guess, although half a century of common-sense highway laws hasn't led to confiscation of all automobiles.
But polarization and exaggeration keep the NRA's coffers filled, its membership numbers up and its place as one of Washington, D.C.'s, most powerful lobbies safe. Still, I wonder what the organization would say about a guy who supports current restrictions on assault weapons, who advocates a total ban on automatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips, who thinks government should pay for voluntary trigger locks, who would raise the legal age for gun purchasers to 21, who would require background checks for buyers at gun shows.
That guy is George W. Bush. And the NRA spent $2 million to get him elected president.
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"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
Right to Bear Arms
ABCNEWS.com Poll Finds Most
Support Individuals' Right to Own Guns
Analysis
By Daniel Merkle
May 14 - Americans overwhelmingly agree with the Justice Department's new position that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of citizens to own guns. But most also favor some restrictions on that right.
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After hearing the Second Amendment verbatim, 73 percent in an ABCNEWS.com poll said it guarantees the right to individual gun ownership. Twenty percent said, instead, that it only guarantees the right of states to maintain militias - the government's longstanding position until the Justice Department reversed it in a U.S. Supreme Court brief last week.
Sampling, data collection and tabulation for this poll were done by TNS Intersearch.
Most do support some restrictions on this right, with 57 percent of Americans favoring "stricter gun control laws." That's about the same as it was last year, but 10 points below its peak. And "strong" support for gun control, at 39 percent, is down seven points since last year, to its lowest in 10 years. (The government's new position, likewise, says gun ownership should be "subject to reasonable restrictions.")
Previous polling by ABCNEWS has found that larger majorities support specific measures such as background checks at gun shows, mandatory trigger locks, handgun registration, banning assault weapons and licensing handgun owners. But nearly six in 10 have opposed a nationwide ban on the sale of handguns, except to law enforcement officers.
Gun control hasn't ranked as a top-tier issue. Few think new laws would substantially reduce violent crime, or would be more effective than better enforcement of current laws.
Stricter Gun Control Laws
Date of Poll Favor Favor "Strongly"
May 12, 2002 57% 39
Jan. 15, 2001 59 46
May 10, 2000 67 50
Tighter Controls Favored
Support for stricter gun control rises to just under seven in 10 women, Democrats, nonwhites, and Northeasterners. It even reaches a slim majority, 51 percent, of those who say the Second Amendment guarantees gun ownership.
Large majorities in all demographic groups agree with the Justice Department's new view on gun rights, peaking among men, whites, Republicans and residents of the South and Midwest. Even 65 percent of those who support tougher gun laws agree, as do 66 percent of women and Democrats.
The government's new position states that the Second Amendment "more broadly protects the rights of individuals, including persons who are not members of any militia or engage in active service or training, to possess and bear their own firearms, subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal use."
The amendment itself 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."
Gun Rights and Gun Control
Constitution grants
right to guns Favor stricter
gun control
All 73% 57
Men 80 44
Women 66 69
Age 18-34 68 62
Age 65+ 69 51
Whites 76 56
Non-whites 63 68
Democrats 66 69
Independents 75 64
Republicans 82 42
Northwest 65 68
Midwest 77 54
South 77 56
West 68 54
Methodology
This ABCNEWS.com survey was conducted by telephone May 8-12, among a random national sample of 1,028 adults. The results have a three-point error margin. Sampling, data collection and tabulation was conducted by TNS Intersearch of Horsham, Pa.
More ABCNEWS polls can be found in our PollVault.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/guns_poll020514.html
"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
See, now, this is why I'm sending all these big newspapers the "food for thought" articles. They don't pay much attention to the opinions of the great unwashed readers, but if you send 'em an article by a guy with credentials they're slightly more likely to have a staffer read the opinion, or sneak a read themselves. At least, maybe 1 out of 10 will.
- Life NRA Member
If dishonorable men shoot unarmed men with army guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and not by general deprivation of constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878