Politically, gun control is dead

timesunion.com ^ | 16 April, 2012 | Adam Winkler

[marktwain]

This week marks five years since the massacre at Virginia Tech, where a mentally ill student, Seung Hui Cho, used two handguns he had bought legally to kill 32 people and wound 25 others. Other than a relatively minor law to improve the national database used for background checks, no significant gun-control legislation followed that tragedy.

Since then, there have been several mass shootings, including additional school rampages and the attempted assassination last year of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. Yet there remains little political will to reform this country's flawed gun-safety rules — unless, of course, someone is proposing to make access to guns easier.

But if gun control is dead politically, it remains alive and well in the courts, despite a few high-profile Supreme Court rulings. For all the talk of America's gun culture, we also have a gun-control culture. Gun control is as much a part of America's DNA as the Second Amendment and the six-shooter.

In 2008, the Supreme Court opened up a new battlefield for the gun-control movement. In District of Columbia vs. Heller, the justices struck down D.C.'s ban on handguns, holding unambiguously for the first time that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to have a gun in your home. Gun rights supporters were hopeful that Heller would be the beginning of the end for gun control, and gun-control advocates were despondent.

They shouldn't have been. Since the Heller decision, the courts have been inundated with lawsuits challenging nearly every type of gun-control law. Over the past four years, there have been more than 300 federal court decisions on the constitutionality of gun control. All but a handful of laws have been upheld.

Gun control's success in the courts has come, in part, from the long history and tradition of firearms regulation.

[marktwain]

Adam Winkler is very good at mischaracterizing colonial regulation of non-citizens as wide spread gun control. Requiring militia members to have guns, and requiring organized militia members from having their guns inspected during musters is fundamentaly different from requiring that all guns be registered or requireing that people obtain government permission to buy or own guns.

[cripplecreek]

I like the way its written in the Michigan constitution.

The Constitution of the State of Michigan Article 1, Section 6 reads:

“Every person has a right to keep and bear arms for the defense of himself and the state.”

[rllngrk33]

Yet there remains little political will to reform this country's flawed gun-safety rules — unless, of course, someone is proposing to make access to guns easier.

Can you feel the anti-gun bias?

[Vaquero]

my individual freedoms shall not be tramped upon by govt. or elitists who want to control my freedoms.

“...the right of THE PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately nothing will preserve it but downright force. When you give up that force, you are ruined.
Patrick Henry, Virginia's US constitution ratification.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Ben Franklin

Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self defense
John Adams

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans posses over almost every other nation…where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
James Mason

The Constitution shall be never construed to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.
Samuel Adams

[Pollster1]

Yet there remains little political will to reform this country's flawed gun-safety rules . . . "

I think the NRA's safety rules are slightly flawed as well, but it's not my place to change them for the NRA. It's certainly not this moron's place to violate the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

[GOPJ]

But if gun control is dead politically, it remains alive and well in the courts...

Elite dems knew they'd be voted out for pushing gun control - so they handed the issue to the 'courts' - an easy way to do an end run around the people.

[SampleMan]

“Bla, bla, bla....and no gun-control legislation followed.”

True, but there was a lot of crime-control legislation that was pushed following these incidents, to ensure that non-crazies could legally defend themselves and others when presented with unpreventable crimes.

Additional minor laws with minor penalities do not prevent criminals from committing major felonies with life or death sentences attached.

[Brilliant]

Its dead til after the election. Whether it resurfaces then will depend on whether 0bama is reelected.

[Carbonsteel]

There are a few things that Liberals and Conservatives have in common.

One of those things is love of guns. Trust me, Liberals love their guns too.

It’s the far left kooks which make up about 5% of Liberals that want nothing to do with them what so ever.

If Democrats want to commit political suicide and drive a huge chunk of their base over to the other side, start pushing gun control again.

Just ask Clinton.....