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Timestamp: 2019-04-18 22:34:21+00:00

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The laws of all 50 states recognize the right to use armed force for self-defense. The U.S. Constitution and 44 state constitutions protect the right to use arms for self-defense.
Of NRA’s 120,000 Certified Firearm Instructors, 79,000 are certified to teach our basic handgun course.
Ironically, though the Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right to keep and bear arms from infringement by the federal government, the states were the first to impose gun control, particularly handgun control.
In the early and mid-1800s, a number of states prohibited the carrying, or the concealed carrying of pistols and various edged weapons. Contrary to gun control supporters’ claim that courts never considered the Second Amendment to protect an individual right until the Supreme Court did so in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), courts clearly did so in cases challenging some of these early laws, in advance of the Supreme Court doing so in the late 1800s in other cases.
In 1911, New York passed the Sullivan Law, which to this day requires a person to obtain a license, issued at the discretion of police officials, to possess a handgun. The law was aimed at preventing handgun ownership by Italians and Irish immigrants of the period, then considered untrustworthy by New York legislators with different bloodlines.
The National Firearms Act (1934), as originally proposed, would have required registration of handguns. As passed, the law imposed that requirement on only fully-automatic firearms, short-barreled shotguns and rifles, and “silencers.” While consideration had been given to banning fully-automatic firearms altogether, President Roosevelt’s Justice Department believed a ban would have violated the Second Amendment.
The Gun Control Act was not the first attempt to prevent Blacks from having guns in this part of the world. The French Black Code (1751) required Louisiana colonists to stop and, “if necessary,” beat “any black carrying any potential weapon.” After Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, the Virginia legislature made it illegal for free blacks “to keep or carry any firelock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead.” In 1834, Tennessee revised Article XI, Section 26 of its constitution to read, “That the free white men of this State have a right to keep and bear arms for their common defense,” inserting the words “free white men” to replace “freemen,” whose rights were protected when the constitution was ratified in 1796.
After ratification of the 14th Amendment (1868) and enactment of the Civil Rights Act (1875), several states responded by passing laws which on their face were race-neutral, but which in effect were not. Among these laws, the forerunners of so-called “Saturday Night Special” legislation, was Tennessee’s “Army and Navy” law (1879), which prohibited the sale of any “belt or pocket pistols, or revolvers, or any other kind of pistols, except army or navy pistol” models, among the most expensive, and largest, handguns of the day. The law thus prohibited small two-shot derringers and low-caliber rimfire revolvers, the handguns that most Blacks could afford.
Conspicuously, the race-oriented history of many federal and state gun control laws has escaped the attention of many in the civil rights community. Legal scholars Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, both African-American, have written, “The history of blacks, firearms regulations, and the right to bear arms should cause us to ask new questions regarding the Second Amendment. . . . Perhaps a re-examination of this history can lead us to a modern realization of what the framers of the Second Amendment understood: that it is unwise to place the means of protection totally in the hands of the state, and that self-defense is also a civil right.
As expected, following imposition of the federal “assault weapons ban” in 1994, gun control supporters refocused their efforts on handguns. In the 104th Congress, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) introduced her “Junk Gun Violence Protection Act,” modified and reintroduced in the 105th Congress as the “American Handgun Standards Act,” and again introduced in the 106th Congress. The bills proposed to prohibit the manufacture, in the U.S., of any handgun that the ATF considered ineligible for importation under 18 U.S.C. 925(d)(3). By regulations adopted by the ATF, a handgun is ineligible for importation if it fails requirements related to length, weight, caliber and other features, called the Handgun Factoring Criteria.
Sen. Boxer claimed her bill would prohibit “Junk Guns—also called Saturday Night Specials,” but it would have prohibited many expensive handguns on the basis of their size. Other bills or laws have defined “Saturday Night Specials” on the basis of the melting point of the metals used in a handgun’s construction, or on the basis of a variety of a handgun’s attributes. During the late 1990s, several California municipalities defied the state’s local ordinance preemption law by imposing their own “Saturday Night Special” laws. Concurrently, anti-gun groups and politicians launched campaigns for mandatory inclusion of trigger locks with all handguns sold, or for a ban on the sale of any handgun not possessing an integral “personalized” safety mechanism, and for lawsuits against manufacturers of handguns, alleging them liable for injuries inflicted by criminals using handguns.
By the early 1990s, the Brady Campaign claimed to no longer be interested in a handgun ban, but its efforts have remained consistent with the three-part handgun ban strategy the group laid out in the 1970s. In the 1980s, when the group was known Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI), it filed a brief in support of Morton Grove, Illinois,’ handgun ban. Following passage of the Brady bill in 1993, which initially imposed a background check on handgun purchasers in states not having a comparable requirement of their own (allowing law enforcement agencies a maximum of five days to complete a check), HCI referred to the measure as “the cornerstone of our national gun policy” and announced a campaign for gun registration and a host of other onerous measures later incorporated into a so-called “Brady II” bill, introduced by the sponsor of the 1993 “Brady bill,” then-Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
After Instant Check replaced the Brady Act’s waiting period restriction on Nov. 30, 1998, HCI, which had previously called for a waiting period on retail sales of handguns, began calling for a waiting period on all firearm transfers, retail and private, handguns and long guns—a measure that could be enforced only if a universal gun registration law were also imposed. HCI’s talking point was, and remains, “[w]e need to close the gun show loophole.” There is no gun show “loophole,” of course, since laws regulating sales of firearms apply at gun shows just as they apply anywhere else, and federal law expressly permits people to sell guns from their personal collections without having to obtain a federal firearm dealer’s license, which today costs $200. The Brady Campaign also filed a brief in Heller, in support of D.C.’s handgun ban.
Other activists make no attempt to conceal their wish that handguns be banned. On Jan. 20, 1999, VPC advocated subjecting firearms to consumer product regulations to be enforced by ATF and said, “we believe that ultimately handguns would be phased out through such an agency.” The late Marvin Wolfgang, a prominent anti-gun criminologist, wrote in 1995 that, if possible, he would “eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police.” U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, while expressing support for legislation to impose a mandatory waiting period on all retail and private firearm transfers, said he favored an outright ban on handguns, but doubts that Americans would support such a measure. In 1993, the founder of the now-defunct HELP (Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan) Network, a group composed largely of anti-gun activists in the public health field, stated that the group’s purpose was to “work toward changing society’s attitude toward guns so that it becomes socially unacceptable for private citizens to have handguns.” Apparently, the group failed. Gallup reports that support for banning handguns has dropped from 60 percent in 1959 to 27 percent in 2011.
Washington, D.C.—During the 1960s, D.C. began requiring police approval to buy a handgun and imposed handgun registration. A law prohibiting the possession of handguns not previously registered with the police took effect in Feb. 1977. Even handguns that remained legal to possess could not realistically be legally used for protection, even at home, since it was illegal to possess a loaded firearm at home. This, in a city where “official police personnel and the government employing them are not generally liable to victims of criminal acts for failure to provide adequate police protection . . . (there is) no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen.” Attorney Stephen Halbrook, who has successfully argued firearm law issues before the Supreme Court, described D.C. gun laws as a “badge of slavery” that treats District residents as “second class citizens” in violation of the 14th Amendment and civil rights legislation adopted by Congress since the Civil War.
From 1974-1976, before the ban took effect, D.C.’s murder rate dropped 30%. Anti-gun activists claimed that murders declined after the ban, but while the annual number of murders decreased, the city’s per capita murder rate increased due to a decrease in D.C.’s population. The rate increased gradually after the ban, dropped sharply after enactment in 1982 of an NRA-backed mandatory penalty for using a gun during a violent crime, rose as the penalty fell into disuse, then rose sharply with the advent of “crack” cocaine gangs. Overall, between 1976 and 1991, D.C.’s homicide rate tripled. In 1993, 1994 and 1995, all but four of the city’s 1,027 firearm-related murders were committed with handguns. D.C.’s murder rate began decreasing in the 1990s, when crime began decreasing nationally. The city’s handgun ban and its ban on having any firearm loaded at home were struck down by the Supreme Court in Heller.
Chicago—Chicago imposed a handgun registration requirement in 1968, with no effect on the city’s rising handgun homicide numbers. After peaking in 1974, Chicago homicides declined until the 1980s. In April 1982, a law prohibiting possession of handguns not previously registered with the police was imposed. Annual handgun homicide numbers and percentages of total homicides fluctuated, then rose sharply.
On October 19, 1984, in a 4-to-3 decision, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld Morton Grove’s ban as within its “police powers.” Prior to the ban, there were an estimated 3,000 privately owned handguns in Morton Grove. Compliance with the law was slight, with fewer than 20 handguns turned in or seized by police after the law took effect. Survey research by Professor Paul Lavrakas of Northwestern University indicated that 80% or more of Morton Grove households (2,400+) still had handguns two years after the law’s enactment. Most people who turned in handguns were much older than the 15- to 30-year-old age group disproportionately responsible for firearm-related crime. The average person turning in a handgun was 63 years old; the mean age, 67. One handgun came from someone under age 40, two from people under age 50; three from people 70 years old or older. Crime rates remained low after the ban, except for a short-term increase in burglary. Morton Grove rescinded its ban following the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller.
Oak Park, Illinois—Despite stable or declining violent crime and burglary trends in other Chicago suburbs, rates of those crimes increased sharply in Oak Park between 1977 (when the village banned handgun sales) and 1984. In 1984, Oak Park banned private possession of handguns altogether, prompting a citizens’ movement to repeal the ordinance. When challenged by a reporter about Oak Park’s increase in burglaries after banning possession of handguns, the village’s president could respond with only a personal attack, accusing the journalist of trying to “insist on the gun nut (the mayor of Kennesaw, Ga., which responded to Oak Park’s ban by singing an ordinance requiring handgun ownership his town) being right.” Oak Park’s ban was struck down by the Supreme Court in McDonald v. Chicago (2010).
Evanston, Illinois—Evanston banned handguns in 1982. In 1983, Evanston’s robbery rate rose 8%, while nationwide suburban areas experienced a 20% decline, and the U.S. rate declined 16%. Evanston rescinded its ban following the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller.
Wisconsin—Despite media predictions of a landslide victory by anti-gun activists, voters in Madison rejected a non-binding handgun ban referendum in April 1993, by 51%-49%. On November 8, 1994, Milwaukee voters rejected a binding handgun ban proposal by 67%-33%, and Kenosha voters defeated one 73%-27%. A non-binding handgun ban referendum in Shorewood passed by 576 votes. In 1998, Wisconsin voters approved, by a margin of 3-to-1, an amendment to their state constitution protecting the right to arms “for security, defense,” and other purposes.
 In U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), the Court recognized that the right to arms is a fundamental, individual right, saying, “The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers the national government.” In Presser v. Illinois (1886), the Court upheld a law prohibiting private groups of people marching armed in a parade without license of the governor. However, the Court observed, “It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as of the States, and, in view of this prerogative of the general government, as well as of its general powers, the States cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government.” In Miller v. Texas (1896) the Court ruled, as it had in Cruikshank and Presser, that the Second Amendment restricts infringement of the right to arms by Congress, but not by the states. In each of these cases, if the Court had believed that the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right, but instead protected a “right” of a state to maintain a militia or that of a person to bear arms while on duty in a state militia, it would have rejected the pleadings of the plaintiffs in Cruikshank, and the defendants in Presser and Miller, as lacking standing before the Court on the grounds that they were neither states nor members of a militia. See Dave Kopel, The Second Amendment Before the Supreme Court, Independence Institute, 2014.
 Robert Sherrill, The Saturday Night Special, New York: Charterhouse, 1973, pp. 280-283.
 B. Bruce-Briggs “The Great American Gun War,” The Public Interest, Fall 1976, p. 50.
 Clayton E. Cramer, “The Racist Roots of Gun Control,” Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy, Winter 1995.
 Don B. Kates, Jr., “Toward a History of Handgun Prohibition in the United States,” Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out, Don B. Kates, Jr., Ed., North River Press, Inc, 1979.
 “The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration,” Gun Control and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations on the Second Amendment, ed., Robert J. Cottrol, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, School of Law, 1994, N.Y.: Garland Publishing, Inc., p. 427.
 Pete Shields, “In His Own Words,” People Weekly, October 20, 1975.
 Shields, quoted in Richard Harris, “A Reporter at Large,” The New Yorker, July 26, 1976.
 Nelson “Pete” Shields, Guns Don’t Die, People Do, p. 126.
 New Right Watch and the Educational Fund to End Handgun Violence, “Assault Weapons in America,” Conclusions, pp. 26-27.
 “Tom Morgenthau, “Why Not Real Gun Control?,” Newsweek, October 11, 1993, p. 34.
 HCI Chair, Sarah Brady, quoted by the Associated Press, January 4, 1999.
 Tom Diaz, on “Fresh Air,” National Public Radio.
 Wolfgang, “A Tribute to a View That I Have Opposed,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Fall 1995, pp. 188-192.
 Ariel Sabar, “Kennedy joins effort to pass gun-control measures,” The Providence Journal, January 4, 1999.
 HELP founder Dr. Katherine K. Christoffel, August 28, 1993, letter to Dr. Edgar Suter, of Doctors for Integrity in Research and Public Policy.
 A 1998 national survey of voters by Lawrence Research found that by an 8:1 margin, Americans believe you have the right to use a handgun to defend yourself in your own home. By a 3:1 margin, they believe that to fight crime, getting tough with criminals is more effective than banning guns. A U.S. News & World Report poll published 5/22/95, found that 75% of Americans believe “the Constitution guarantees you the right to own a gun;” 18% disagreed. On 1/24/94, NBC TV News asked viewers “Should handguns be banned?” By 80%-20%, respondents said “no.” A June 1993 Luntz-Weber Strategic Services poll found that only 21% believe “all guns should be outlawed,” only 9% believe restricting firearms is “the single most important thing that can be done to reduce violent crime,” and only 8% believe guns are “the most important cause of violent crime.” The public favored mandatory prison for criminals, over “gun control,” 70%-25%. Polls claiming that the public supports additional restrictions on firearms generally have been commissioned by anti-gun groups or conducted by firms with histories of support for their activities, and often occur after a major media blitz castigating firearms.
 Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d1 1, D.C. App. 1981.
 Halbrook, “Second-Class Citizenship and the Second Amendment in the District of Columbia,” George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal, Summer 1995.
 Colin Loftin, et al., “Effects of Restrictive Licensing of Handguns on Homicide and Suicide in the District of Columbia,” New England Journal of Medicine, 325:1615-1620, 1991.
 Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove, 532 F. Supp. 1169, N.D. Ill.
 Kalodimos v. Village of Morton Grove, 113 Ill. App.3d 488.
 Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove, 695 F.2d 261.
 Dishonestly, anti-gun groups continued to falsely claim that NRA was afraid to press for the Supreme Court to rule in a Second Amendment case. However, that claim came to an abrupt halt after the Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms. Thereafter, gun control supporters conceived a brand new, false claim, that in declaring the amendment to protect an individual right, Heller reversed previous Supreme Court rulings, discussed in note 5, above. Heller was novel only in that it was the first case in U.S. history in which the Court was asked to rule on specifically whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.
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