I'll bet a lot of you conservatives out there have thought, "Maybe President Bush has screwed up in a lot of areas, but at least he'll stand up for the 2nd Amendment." Guess again:
Since "unrestricted" private ownership of guns clearly threatens the public safety, the 2nd Amendment can be interpreted to allow a variety of gun restrictions, according to the Bush administration.
The argument was delivered by U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in the ongoing arguments over the legality of a District of Columbia ban on handguns in homes, according to a report from the Los Angeles Times.
Clement suggested that gun rights are limited and subject to "reasonable regulation" and said all federal limits on guns should be upheld.
Just how dismissive of gun rights is this? It's so bad that our former mayor, Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign, "salutes the administration for its position." The president has now disavowed both the 2nd Amendment and the 1st (by signing campaign finance "reform" legislation). Good thing he has so little time to work on the other eight -- well, make that six, since the 9th and 10th have been rendered moot.
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It's what happens when you're a lame duck. You aren't beholden to lobbyists anymore. You don't have to pay lip service to their Second Amendment line of crap and sound like one of the moronic voters who buys into it. Not a bad move when your legacy is otherwise at risk of making you look like the absolute buffoon-in-chief of all time.
The Bush administration quickly went South in terms of protecting the Second Amendment when Ashcroft left. Trouble is, Romney would be a whole lot worse in that regard. In fact only only a couple so-called Republican candidates support Second Amendment rights, and only one appears to have any chance to win at this point -- that would be Huckabee.
I wish the libs would stop with the tired old disinformation about the NRA being a big faceless lobby just like Big Oil. Unlike big lobbies which represent a relative few people in top management running super-rich corporations, the NRA-ILA is a grassroots organization of several million American citizens who are forced to act to preserve liberties older than the nation itself, liberties embodied in, but not brought into existence by, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.
The NRA is a big lobby all right -- but of 3-4 million Americans, not a few rich and powerful people looking to line their own pockets. Next time you talk about the "NRA Lobby" honestly, be sure to picture those millions of citizen-members, not a tiny minority of billionaires in some smoky back room.
Phooey.
The gun industry is a big faceless lobby exactly like Big Oil. The difference is that Big Oil hasn't figured out how to dupe millions of paranoiacs into believing that its interests are the same as the people's. Hell, Big Guns has managed to enlist a citizen militia that would probably commit suicide bombings if asked to do so.
I don't think Paul Helmke goes far enough, frankly. If it were up to me, mandatory mental status exams would be a condition of gun ownership.
"Hell, Big Guns has managed to enlist a citizen militia that would probably commit suicide bombings if asked to do so"
On what, may I ask, do you base that ridiculous assumption/statement? Nothing could be further from the truth.
I know I'm wandering a little off topic, but...
I Wonder HOW MANY of those NRA members have committed HOMICIDES or CRIMES WITN GUNS...as opposed to the rest of the populace that happens to have guns (or that small portion of the citizenry that DOES the cirmes), hmm???
Bet that number is REAL LOW
(probably more like non-existent)
And no matter WHAT battery of tests, evaluations, exams...whatEVER, if some jerk WANTS to get a gun...they WILL.
And THAT is what you have to focus on, not all the law-abiding people owning weapons.
(God, I get tired of ssaying the same old thing...it's not GUNS, it's PEOPLE that cause the problems)
And if anyone thinks that guns ARE the problem, then so are CARS...and MATCHES...and so on, and so on...
B.G.