Bfgrn
New member
Schumer has been very clear and honest. If you want to become intelligent like me, you need to pull that thumb out of your mouth and learn. It is the only way to destroy those little dogmatic demons that control your very being. So crawl out from under mommy's bed and LEARN.
A middle ground on gun limits
By Charles E. Schumer, Published: December 19
The first part is something many gun-control advocates did not wish to hear, but it was a needed dose of reality. Before Heller, the goal of some gun-control activists was an outright ban on handguns. Heller removes that possibility for good. Progressives should move on and work within the ruling. This means no longer harboring ideas of a future liberal majority on the court someday overturning Heller. It also means that states and localities should abide by the spirit of the ruling, not just its letter, and not seek to impose undue burdens upon law-abiding citizens seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
The truth is, it was bad strategy to ever deny an individual right to bear arms and, similarly, the special place guns hold in our culture. That mentality alienated potential allies in the ideological middle of the gun debate — something I learned three years ago when my friend Ben Nelson invited me to Nebraska for my first hunting trip. I returned with true respect for how, in many parts of America, gun ownership is not just a constitutional right but a way of life. It has the same meaning in Nebraska that playground basketball did for me in my Brooklyn neighborhood. Heller understands that reality.
In the current state of play, moderate gun owners have become convinced by the NRA and other, even more radical gun organizations such as Gun Owners of America that the goal of all gun-safety advocates is to take away their guns. These owners view even the most reasonable gun-safety proposals with suspicion, fearing a slippery slope to a ban on firearms. This paranoia is what gives the gun lobby its power.
It wasn’t always this way. After the assassinations of leaders like Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. in the late 1960s, the nation enacted sweeping gun-safety laws — and the NRA did not stand in the way.
The NRA was less political in that era and more focused on providing practical assistance to its members, much like AAA does today for automobile owners. But in the 1980s, the group became more militant. Part of this was driven by new leadership, which sought to expand the group’s membership rolls and collect more dues.
But this radicalization was also abetted by those who really were seeking an outright ban on guns.
Now that Heller has ruled out the possibility of anyone ever taking away their weapons, gun owners should be more open to some reasonable limitations. No individual right is absolute, after all. While the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, no one has a right to falsely shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, nor to traffic in child pornography. Likewise, the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms also comes with limits.
We need to refine those limits in the wake of what happened in Newtown.
Washington Post
