Gun Confiscation Reference March 2018

[Reverse chronological order]
Index List
March 30, 2018
Paste Magazine: Repeal the Second Amendment, Idiots
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/03/repeal-the-second-amendment-idiots.html
Mar 28, 2018
USA Today: Repealing the Second Amendment isn't easy but it's what March for Our Lives students need
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/03/28/repealing-second-amendment-march-our-lives-students/463644002/
March 27, 2018
New York Times – John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens-repeal-second-amendment.html
Mar 22, 2018
The Birds and The BS: We're not saying we're coming for your guns...we're singing it!
March 21, 2018
The Charlotte News: Ban military-style assault weapons for the sake of our children
http://www.charlottenewsvt.org/2018/03/21/ban-military-style-assault-weapons-sake-children/
Mar 14, 2018
Vox: What no politician wants to admit about gun control
https://www.vox.com/2015/10/5/9454161/gun-violence-solution
“taking a huge number of guns away from a huge number of gun owners”
March 6, 2018
NAACP President OPINION: Gun Safety Is about Freedom
http://www.naacp.org/latest/opinion-gun-safety-freedom/
[Australian style gun confiscation – making gun owners an offer they can’t refuse ]

---

March 30, 2018
Repeal the Second Amendment, Idiots
By Roger Sollenberger  |  March 30, 2018

This week, former Justice of the Supreme Court John Paul Stevens, a conservative, wrote in an op-ed that Americans should “demand the repeal of the Second Amendment.” He continued, “a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the NRA’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.”

In 1991, Former Chief Justice Warren Burger, famously conservative, said that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” Burger added that if he were to rewrite the Bill of Rights, “There wouldn’t be any such thing as the Second Amendment.”

But note Burger’s careful language: the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud.”

That’s not the same as saying the Second Amendment itself is a fraud. What Burger meant was that the amendment has been abused by the gun lobby and conservatives for political gain. It’s now a weapon of fear, and was forged in the ironworks of good old fashioned American racism. The truth is that the Second Amendment is hopelessly out of date, or in the words of Justice Stevens, a constitutional provision that might once have had relevance but is now “a relic of the 18th century.”

The Second Amendment should be repealed, and at the very least rewritten. It’s about updating the Constitution to enable gun control in the interest of lowering death rates, suicide rates, and stopping massacres. The Constitution was made to be legally broken. It’s high time we stopped listening to the one-fifth of gun owners who belong to the NRA and argue in bad faith that this is a sacred and inviolable right. It’s not.

I’m not going to trot out a bunch of statistics about gun deaths, massacres, and suicides. We all know those arguments, and you can feel free to debate them elsewhere. I’m not interested in that anymore. Hunt, fine. Keep a revolver locked up in your home for protection, fine. I wouldn’t do it, and it’s dangerous as hell, but I understand. Semi-automatics, though? Ban them all, confiscate them, and burn them. Here’s my defense of that opinion.

This article is now about the Second Amendment.

America First and Only

The United States is the only country in the world that gives its constituents a blanket right to own weapons. This isn’t a reason in itself to enact any sort of policy, but it’s worth noting because the parallel consequences are undeniable: The U.S. is the only country with this kind of law, and the U.S. is the only country with these kinds of single-shooter massacres of targeted innocents.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/03/repeal-the-second-amendment-idiots.html


Mar 28, 2018
Repealing the Second Amendment isn't easy but it's what March for Our Lives students need
Jonathan Turley, Opinion columnist Published 3:15 a.m. ET March 28, 2018
A full repeal of the Second Amendment is hard work, but it is the only way March for Our Lives won't be hijacked by political figures wanting to harness energy and votes more than save lives.
Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has caused a stir by calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment. It was a call that young protesters should heed if they want to work for real change — and not simply be hijacked by political figures wanting to harness their energy and votes. Putting the merits of a repeal aside, Stevens, 97, was doing something that has been missing in the aftermath of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. He was being honest. These kids have been sold a bill of goods by politicians exaggerating not just the impact of proposed legislative changes but their actual ability to significantly curtail this individual right.
…
If it is real reform that these students want, they must convince their fellow citizens, as Justice Joseph Story once said, that part of the Constitution “has become wholly unsuited to the circumstances of the nation.”

It is not impossible but it is not easy. Circumstances and politics change. However, what does not change is the process for achieving real change. Even if the Second Amendment is, as Stevens describes, a “relic of the 18th Century,” it will take more than rhetoric to remove such a relic in the 21st Century.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/03/28/repealing-second-amendment-march-our-lives-students/463644002/

March 27, 2018

John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment

By John Paul Stevens   March 27, 2018

Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.

That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.

Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.

...

In 2008, the Supreme Court overturned Chief Justice Burger’s and others’ long-settled understanding of the Second Amendment’s limited reach by ruling, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that there was an individual right to bear arms. I was among the four dissenters.

...

That simple but dramatic action would move Saturday’s marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform. It would eliminate the only legal rule that protects sellers of firearms in the United States — unlike every other market in the world. It would make our schoolchildren safer than they have been since 2008 and honor the memories of the many, indeed far too many, victims of recent gun violence.

Correction: 

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misidentified the 18th-century firearm depicted. It is a musket, not a rifle.

John Paul Stevens is a retired associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Repeal the Second Amendment. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens-repeal-second-amendment.html

Mar 22, 2018

The Birds and The BS - Nice Assault Weapons feat. Ana Gasteyer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2n4RnXTS1A

The Birds and The BS

Published on Mar 22, 2018

We're not saying we're coming for your guns...we're singing it! With Ana Gasteyer! Watch the latest episode of The Birds and the BS where we explore our 2nd Amendment wrong rights.

The Birds and The BS is the kids show for adults! Because we forgot everything we learned in kindergarten. Join Mr. Jordan and his especially animated friends as they sing you towards the right path…but you know, left.

March 21, 2018

Ban military-style assault weapons for the sake of our children

by Susan OhanianMarch 21, 2018

...

Because I do not think Vermonters can stand in silence while students ask for safe schools, I introduced the following advisory motion as the last item at Town Meeting on March 6, 2018:

...

I move that the Town of Charlotte request that the Vermont State Legislature modify our gun laws in imitation of the federal assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004, which act imposed a ban on the manufacture, importation, and sale of assault weapons, and restricted their possession and disposal, and which laid down specific conditions in such a way as to maintain consistency with the Constitution and the Second Amendment.

I move that the chair of the Charlotte Select Board send this motion to the President Pro Tem of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, and our Representative, Mike Yantachka.

The motion passed with acclaim.

...

http://www.charlottenewsvt.org/2018/03/21/ban-military-style-assault-weapons-sake-children/

Mar 14, 2018

Vox: What no politician wants to admit about gun control

By Dylan Matthews@dylanmattdylan@vox.com Updated Mar 14, 2018

Realistically, a gun control plan that has any hope of getting us down to European levels of violence is going to mean taking a huge number of guns away from a huge number of gun owners.

Other countries have done exactly that. Australia, for example, enacted a mandatory gun buyback that achieved that goal, and saw firearm suicides fall as a result. But the reforms those countries enacted are far more dramatic than anything US politicians are calling for — and even they wouldn't get us to where many other developed countries are.

...

Unless something dramatic changes, gun violence will remain a distinctly American problem for the rest of our lives — background checks or no.

https://www.vox.com/2015/10/5/9454161/gun-violence-solution

March 6, 2018

OPINION: Gun Safety Is about Freedom

March 6, 2018 / By Derrick Johnson 

In the wake of the Parkland massacre, NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson says that comprehensive, sustainable gun control is achievable. Johnson uses Australia’s gun control policies as an example.

Unfortunately, years of ridiculously easy access to guns and ammunition has yielded an epidemic with deadly consequences for all Americans, but has been particularly fatal for communities of color who are disproportionately impacted. Gun violence is the number one killer of African Americans ages 15 to 34. Though African Americans make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, we represent nearly 50 percent of all gun homicide victims. Over 80 percent of gun deaths of African Americans are homicides. Roughly speaking, 1 out of every 3 African American males who die between the ages of 15 and 19 is killed by gun violence. African American children and teens were less than 15 percent of the total child population in 2008 and 2009, but accounted for 45 percent of all child- and teen-related gun deaths. These numbers are tragic and intolerable, but most of all they are preventable.

Critics might call such policy interventions naively ambitious in our current political climate. However, comprehensive, sustainable gun control is achievable. We know this because someone has done it.

Just look to Australia.

In the past 20 years, Australia has proven that sensible reform can prevail over partisan divides and high rates of gun ownership. In the spring of 1996, Australia faced the deadliest mass shooting in its history when a 28-year-old man opened fire at a tourist resort in Tasmania, killing 35 and wounding 23 with a semi-automatic rifle. Following the massacre, the party in power—the center-right Liberal coalition—surprised the country and world by joining with groups across the political spectrum to implement a radical intervention on gun violence. Over the course of mere months, the Australian government bought and destroyed over half a million firearms, banned automatic and semiautomatic weapons, created a national firearms registry, and enforced a 28-day waiting period for gun purchases.

The results were both clear and staggering—there has not been a single mass shooting in Australia since 1996. Additionally, data shows that in the ten years following the Tasmanian massacre, gun-related homicides and suicides dropped by 59 percent and 65 percent, respectively. While there is still room for improvement, the immediate and directly correlative impact of Australia’s gun control reform demonstrates the potential of policy to promote peace.

Australia’s gun control intervention was not achieved without encountering significant opposition. Like America, Australia holds a near fetish-like obsession for rugged individualism, which caused many to resent the government’s action and to perceive it as an insult to gun owners and a breach of power. To be fair, a 28-day waiting period on gun purchases hardly fits the image of the reckless, rough-and-tumble Outback presented by media and movies. But, as President Obama praised in 2015, the Australian people ultimately united in favor of national safety and progress.

http://www.naacp.org/latest/opinion-gun-safety-freedom/