The notion that rounds discharged per pull of trigger is what catagorizes a weapon as “dangerous” is the falsity that most of the Brady Dogma has been predicated upon.

Anyone who has served in the military knows that single, accurate fire is more effective in 99% of situations one may encounter in any type of combat; be it offensive, defensive or MOUT.

The Brady supposition that one would essentially “need less to kill more” is incorrect for a multitude of reasons:

1. Tactics are what kills people; the individual is in fact the “weapon” and the firearms is simply a tool at their disposal. A person motivated to kill or maim others is going to adjust their tactics appropriately to match their tool selection. The inverse is not true.
For example, if you ban “semi-automatics”, it will be a logical conclusion to assume that criminals will favor tactics more akin to Charles Whitman’s massacre, which involved a bolt action.

If you ban bolt actions, short arms, bladed weapons, truncheons, ball bats and other devices still remain. Anything can be used as a tool to take human life. Assault is a state of mind, NOT a type of weapon.

2. Training is the predominate factor in effectiveness with a weapon. A person who aquires a weapon such as an AK47, and assumes that their experience playing video games will be valuable and applicable to their pursuit in violence are typically less effective with these types of weapons, which are ironically used in less than 2% of our national violent crimes.
Good examples are the Nebraska mall shooting compared to Virginia Tech, where a pistol which is unarguably less effective was used to kill five times the amount of people.

In Virginia Tech, it’s irresponsible to blame the weapon, considering that the “victims” hid under their desks, and chose to die rather than resist.
In my opinion, this is an issue of social denegration, and a product of the incipid, “me” generation, in which every person feels that their life is the most valuable thing in the world, and are unwilling to risk it, even to prevent their own death.

3. Guns still only cause about 50% of our national crime. That’s really amazing when you think about the idea that they are available to pretty much anyone. To expand on this point, we can also consider there is no statistical approach to guns SAVING lives – only taking them, and these numbers are also deposited into the aforementioned rough 50% of shootings annually.

These are perceptive issues that have come with several generations of cultural change that has villified objects and taken a liabless approach to dealing with the individual.

It does not take into account that the Bill of Rights (which enumerates the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms) was a document dealing with individual liberty, and not “collective” rights.

I’ve also not expanded on the fact that the founding fathers had just succeeded in challenging the most modern and powerful military force in the world with muskets and untrained militia using the aforementioned “mindset” and “tactics” to accomplish a goal for the pursuit of liberty.

The ownership of Firearms as an equalizer is not a “privledge” that can be regulated, it is a right, bestowed by birth on all free men and women.

Perhaps I should not have used the word “unreasonably” in my original post, as it implies a legal standard that does not apply in this case. Let me explain my point differently.

While I believe the 2nd Amendment enshrines a fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms, I do not believe that right is absolute. In particular, I think that the term “infringe” in the second clause of the amendment does not imply some absolute bar against regulation of “arms.” Rather, I think it means that the Court should apply a strict scrutiny standard when reveiwing a law that regulates arms. While strict scrutiny is just that, strict, the fact that it applies in a case does not mean that the law in question is de facto unconstitutional. It just means the state passing that law has some high hurdles to clear to prove its constitutionality.

Thus, as you may well realize, there are two (some say three) prongs to this test:

1. Is there a compelling governmental interest at stake?
2. Is the law narrowly tailored to achieve that interest?
(3. Is the the law the least restrictive means of achieving that interest?)

The real question in the Heller case, in my opinion, is how will the Court come out on these two(three) questions with regards to the DC gun law. While I think there is a compelling state interest at stake (protecting DC residents from gun violence), I think there’s a decent argument to be made that the nearly-categorical ban on handgun ownership and severe limitations on long-gun ownership is not narrowly tailored. But, that said, the ownership of “arms” is not completely banned and the regulation of long guns could be construed to be narrowly tailored.

So, while I agree that one role of the Constitution is to protect minority interests, and I agree that the right to bear arms should be considered a fundamental right, I disagree with your contention that DC’s gun regulations are obviously unconstitutional. I’ll leave that ultimate conclusion up to the nine jurists whose job it is to interpret and apply the law.

Cheers!

If the notion of a “trace” is supported, then even if you don’t buy the trace all the way from a musket to M16, VPC/Brady have provided ample reason to reverse the logic. If semi-automatic firearms are appropriate arms, then M16s must be just as appropriate for minimally regulated ownership and use.

I read the statement of Chris posted January 12 on the nraila.org site. It seems to me that Mr. Cox or someone did not read the entire brief. As far as I am concerned, the brief is mostly a disaster for gun rights advocates and here is why. There is section titled “Congress Has Authority To Prohibit Particular Types Of Firearms, Such As Machineguns”, and here is a quote from that section: “Such a categorical approach would cast doubt on the constitutionality of the current federal machinegun ban, as well as on Congress’s general authority to protect the public safety by identifying and proscribing particularly dangerous weapons.”

For those of us who have been active in the gun rights movement, that language is similar to that which has been used by every politician who wanted to regulate or ban firearms. It is difficult to see what working firearm future Congresses would not be able to ban in the name of public safety, if the court adopts Clement’s view.

DC will sure be sure to parrot Clement’s view before the court and argue that it (DC) concedes there is an individual right to arms, but handguns pose a serious threat to public safety, and thus according to the Bush administration, DC can prohibit handgun ownership.

Cox needs to rework his post because it paints a rosy and false picture of the brief.

I am sure that Schumer, Feinstein, Brady, DC, the NY Times and all the other gun grabbers are cheering Clement’s “reasonable approach” to the Second Amendment.

And I am curious: how does an effective gun ban NOT “unreasonably infringe” 2nd Amendment rights, if that Amendment is found to enshrine an individual right to keep and bear arms?

Personally, I don’t like the substance of the District’s gun laws. But, as an expression of the political will of an overwhelming majority of my fellow DC residents residents which, while strict, does not seem to unreasonably infringe on my 2nd Amendment rights, these gun laws seem nominally constitutional. Trying to argue something demonstrably false (i.e., that DC is a war zone) in order to call the efficacy of these laws into question isn’t going to change that fact.

If we go with the “founding era’s” treatment of arms, we see that private citizens were able to own just about anything that the army used — indeed, the “privateers” of the time were privately-owned warships. The implication of that is to allow tanks and the like for private ownership.

The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the Denver AW ban by essentially claiming that any law short of a total prohibition on all firearms would not violate the Colorado constitution.

I’m not sure it’s the right state, but I think the Kentucky Supreme Court essentially ruled that only weapons in use at the time the constitution was adapted in the 19th Century were protected by the constitution!

The claims by S.G. Clement regarding DC vs Heller is just another means by which to emasculate the 2nd Amendment and preserve government power over the people.