New Student Newspaper at UT Austin

[farson135]

A friend of mine just started an independent newspaper at the University of Texas at Austin. The first issue of the paper is being handed out this week. The topic for this month is gun control. To give you an idea of my friend’s position, he is an NRA and TSRA Life Member and he is the rifle captain of the UT Rifle and Pistol Club. The paper this month is discussing various gun control topics such as Concealed Carry on Campus, the “Assault Clip” Ban, Gun Control Around the World, and on.

The newspaper is called Contumacy. The paper will not just cover Second Amendment issues (instead it will mostly cover local and campus issues) but since its first issue is dealing with gun rights I figured y’all would be interested,

The reason I am posting this (beyond common interest) is because they could use some positive feedback. I helped hand out some of the papers and needless to say some of the responses were distinctly negative. Luckily, since they did not read the paper, they do not know where to send hate mail, yet. Unfortunately Austin in general and UT in particular is relatively anti-gun and a bit of encouragement would help them out.

If any of y’all are interested I am posting a link to Contumacy’s Facebook. They also have a C&R firearm review on their front page (crufflers rejoice)- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Contumacy/1066711203467473

Also, if any of y’all are in the Austin area and have time to come out, Contumacy is handing out papers from 10AM-3PM at the West Mall on campus.

Finally, I got permission from the my friend to post a copy of one of their stories (they plan to post their entire paper online as soon as their website is updated). I doubt any of the information is new to anyone here but it is new to many people on campus-

Brief History of the 2nd Amendment by Rudolph Kohn

The second amendment, shown above, guarantees an individual right. The wording of the amendment is clear: the right to keep and bear arms is a right of the people. A careful look at the wording supports this view. Existing laws and many Supreme Court decisions support this viewpoint as well. However, proponents of gun control argue that the right to keep and bear arms is a collective right, guaranteeing states the power to form units like the National Guard, conveniently eliminating any right of the general public to arms.

First, the arrangement of the second amendment has two clauses, but the main clause is not limited by the initial clause. The existence or organization of the militia aside, there exists a right to keep and bear arms, and that right is held by the people. As an example, the sentence, “An automobile being necessary to get to work, I will purchase and maintain one,” has a similar construction. But even if I buy a car because I need to get to work, I am not limited to using it solely for that purpose.

However, even accepting the notion that the right belongs to the militia, the Militia Act of 1792, amended by the Dick Act of 1902, provides that “the militia shall consist of every able-bodied male...who is more than eighteen and less than forty-five years of age.” Later in the same section, the militia is divided into the organized militia and the reserve militia. The National Guard is the organized militia, legally, but the rest of us still belong to the reserve. Limiting the right to keep and bear arms to the militia would basically discriminate against women and the elderly.

The right to keep and bear arms had been referred to in several Supreme Court decisions. The United States v. Miller decision of 1939, often referred to as evidence for the collective rights interpretation, does not really suggest that the right to keep and bear arms is collective; the Court lacked evidence that a short-barreled shotgun has a relation to militia purposes, possibly because no one appeared at the Court on the side of the defendants. In fact, the case was remanded back down, but no one was left to prosecute. This decision in support of a single specific law requiring a tax on certain arms traveling between states is a far cry from a denial of an individual right. The notion that the arms protected by the second amendment are those that might be useful in militia service does not deny that the right belongs to the people. So, while the Miller decision might leave open questions regarding what sorts of taxes could be applied to arms, it does not suggest that arms of use to a militia can be banned from possession by individuals.

The Supreme Court's decision in the District of Columbia et al. v. Heller case of 2008 puts many of these concerns to rest. To summarize, the majority decision affirms an individual rights interpretation of the second amendment, and holds that the summary ban of handguns, as existed in the District of Columbia since 1975, was unconstitutional. The same decision holds that arms in common use for lawful purposes, including self-defense, are protected from total bans by the second amendment. But even the dissenting opinions, written by Justices Stevens and Breyer, note that the right is an individual one, and simply question the scope of such a right, suggesting that restrictions on arms might serve important public safety concerns without violating the second amendment.

Most recently, the McDonald v. Chicago case was decided in 2010. In this decision, the majority opinion stated that the right to keep and bear arms, as discussed in the Heller decision, is incorporated under the fourteenth amendment, forbidding infringement by state governments in much the same way that the freedoms of speech and the press are.

Advocates of gun control can claim that the right to keep and bear arms is a right of government entities, but the evidence points toward the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right, and suggests that total bans of arms, especially those with applications to militia use, are unconstitutional, regardless of whether states or the federal government enact them.

 

[Texshooter]

Excellant!

Big campuses (read that many liberal gov't employee profs) in vast need of alternative news sources.

Keep us posted.

 

[KTXdm9]

Tell your friend to keep fighting the good fight. College campuses in general could use a good dose of common sense to break up the group think.

 

[ball3006]

That is good. Austin is one of the arm pits of liberalism in Texas. Dallas is the other....chris3

 

[shinerjohn]

Fantastic! I don't have Facebook, so tell your friend to hang tough for me! Austin definitely needs work....