DataMonkey
Member
All-
I have attached Ms. Woolner's column below. She is obviously doing Mike Bloomberg's bidding in the financial community. I have sent her an email to her Bloomberg email account inviting her to debate her gun control advocacy position provided she can use facts and sources, not emotion or hyperbole. Let's wait and see what happens.
Note: I've already pointed out several (not all) errors regarding the facts of her argument.
Give Us a Right to Be Free of Those Who Bear Arms: Ann Woolner
2010-03-03 02:34:59.948 GMT
Commentary by Ann Woolner
March 3 (Bloomberg) -- Second Amendment fans were at the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday arguing that the constitutionally protected right to bear arms should kill Chicago’s gun law.
The court will probably do just that. But Chicago’s ban on handguns, along with one in suburban neighbor Oak Park, are the only laws that are so restrictive. They don’t reflect what is going on across much of the country.
The real problem is that state legislators want to give more people the right to buy more guns and carry them into more places.
In my home state, Georgia lawmakers are pushing a bill that would welcome handguns into bars and houses of worship, onto college campuses and state playgrounds. Subways would be fine places to bring your firearms, as would the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s. Political rallies, too.
Chicago’s looking better to me all the time.
In Virginia, a new law lets people with hidden guns take them where alcohol is served. Plus, legislators there are working to repeal a law that limits gun buyers to one purchase a month, the New York Times reports.
Twelve new guns per year per person apparently aren’t enough in Virginia, in spite of bumper stickers claiming Virginia is for lovers. That is fine until your multiply armed lover thinks you are flirting with someone else as he downs a few drinks at your neighborhood tavern. (Maybe that is why they are called shooters.)
Out West, Arizona and Wyoming lawmakers are pondering the idea of letting people carry concealed weapons without a permit.
Wild West
So eager are some states to let gun-toters tote guns that Montana and Tennessee legislatures last year voted to exempt the states from federal restrictions for guns and ammo that never cross state lines.
So while the Supreme Court seems poised to say state and local gun control laws can be limited by the Second Amendment, I’m headed in the other direction.
I favor a reverse Second Amendment. It would read something like this:
“Well-regulated firearms, being necessary to the security of the states, the right of the people to be safe from gunfire as they go about their daily lives shall not be infringed.”
I doubt the amendment would get through Congress, much less through even a smattering of states for ratification. Federal law now allows loaded guns in national parks, thanks to a bill President Barack Obama signed last month. He thus reversed a ban bearing President Ronald Reagan’s signature.
Suffering Setbacks
True, gun lovers have suffered setbacks, too. A federal appeals court sided with Atlanta last year for declaring Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport a gun-free zone despite a 2008 state law allowing firearms there. That decision is one of the reasons lawmakers want to take another run at it.
In Maryland, the gun-rights and gun-control forces are in a stalemate, says Mark Arthur, who stood in the cold on the lower plaza of the Supreme Court yesterday holding a sign favoring gun rights.
A 40-year-old restaurant worker, Arthur is among others trying to persuade the Maryland legislature to ease restrictions that now require people to show “good and substantial reason”
to get permits to carry guns.
“It’s an individual right,” he says. The Supreme Court said so in 2008 when it struck down the District of Columbia’s gun ban. He is hoping the Supreme Court will give his cause another boost by saying states and cities can’t interfere with that right.
Sounding Hopeful
But gun-control advocate Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, also sounded hopeful when he talked to reporters outside the court.
“The crucial thing here is to have the court endorse reasonable restrictions,” he said.
And during arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday, it was clear that was the most that gun-control advocates could expect. Still, it is something.
Even Justice Antonin Scalia, a duck hunter and the author of the 2008 ruling, has called reasonable gun restrictions presumptively legal.
He repeated the point yesterday. A lawyer for Chicago and Oak Park, James A. Feldman, was arguing that the decision on the District of Columbia, if extended to cities and states, still allowed bans on some kinds of guns.
“That’s fine,” Scalia said. “We said as much” in the
2008 opinion.
What Is Reasonable
So now we are down to what is reasonable and what isn’t.
The notion of attending a political rally where people angry over health care or anything else are packing heat scares me.
And there have been too many church shootings, including that of Alberta King, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s mother, killed in my hometown one Sunday morning, to feel good about letting guns in church.
Arthur, who says he is a liberal who includes gun rights among the civil rights he supports, makes it clear he thinks the answer to gun violence is to let more people arm themselves.
“Just how would rendering me defenseless protect you from violent criminals,” asks his sign.
I get that argument. But the notion of everyone around me packing pistols wherever I go gives me no comfort.
Oak Park banned handguns in 1984 after a former policeman smuggled a gun into a post-divorce proceeding and shot and killed the judge and his ex-wife’s lawyer, who lived in Oak Park. Their killings drove friends and family to push for gun control.
Anyone for a reverse Second Amendment?
(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
For Related News and Information:
Top legal stories: TLAW <GO>
More Woolner columns: NI WOOLNER <GO>
More Bloomberg columns: NI COLUMNS BN <GO> and OPED <GO>
--Editors: Jim Rubin, James Greiff.
To contact the writer of this column:
Ann Woolner in Atlanta at +1-404-507-1314 or [email protected].
To contact the editor responsible for this column:
James Greiff at +1-212-617-5801 or [email protected].
I have attached Ms. Woolner's column below. She is obviously doing Mike Bloomberg's bidding in the financial community. I have sent her an email to her Bloomberg email account inviting her to debate her gun control advocacy position provided she can use facts and sources, not emotion or hyperbole. Let's wait and see what happens.
Note: I've already pointed out several (not all) errors regarding the facts of her argument.
Give Us a Right to Be Free of Those Who Bear Arms: Ann Woolner
2010-03-03 02:34:59.948 GMT
Commentary by Ann Woolner
March 3 (Bloomberg) -- Second Amendment fans were at the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday arguing that the constitutionally protected right to bear arms should kill Chicago’s gun law.
The court will probably do just that. But Chicago’s ban on handguns, along with one in suburban neighbor Oak Park, are the only laws that are so restrictive. They don’t reflect what is going on across much of the country.
The real problem is that state legislators want to give more people the right to buy more guns and carry them into more places.
In my home state, Georgia lawmakers are pushing a bill that would welcome handguns into bars and houses of worship, onto college campuses and state playgrounds. Subways would be fine places to bring your firearms, as would the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s. Political rallies, too.
Chicago’s looking better to me all the time.
In Virginia, a new law lets people with hidden guns take them where alcohol is served. Plus, legislators there are working to repeal a law that limits gun buyers to one purchase a month, the New York Times reports.
Twelve new guns per year per person apparently aren’t enough in Virginia, in spite of bumper stickers claiming Virginia is for lovers. That is fine until your multiply armed lover thinks you are flirting with someone else as he downs a few drinks at your neighborhood tavern. (Maybe that is why they are called shooters.)
Out West, Arizona and Wyoming lawmakers are pondering the idea of letting people carry concealed weapons without a permit.
Wild West
So eager are some states to let gun-toters tote guns that Montana and Tennessee legislatures last year voted to exempt the states from federal restrictions for guns and ammo that never cross state lines.
So while the Supreme Court seems poised to say state and local gun control laws can be limited by the Second Amendment, I’m headed in the other direction.
I favor a reverse Second Amendment. It would read something like this:
“Well-regulated firearms, being necessary to the security of the states, the right of the people to be safe from gunfire as they go about their daily lives shall not be infringed.”
I doubt the amendment would get through Congress, much less through even a smattering of states for ratification. Federal law now allows loaded guns in national parks, thanks to a bill President Barack Obama signed last month. He thus reversed a ban bearing President Ronald Reagan’s signature.
Suffering Setbacks
True, gun lovers have suffered setbacks, too. A federal appeals court sided with Atlanta last year for declaring Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport a gun-free zone despite a 2008 state law allowing firearms there. That decision is one of the reasons lawmakers want to take another run at it.
In Maryland, the gun-rights and gun-control forces are in a stalemate, says Mark Arthur, who stood in the cold on the lower plaza of the Supreme Court yesterday holding a sign favoring gun rights.
A 40-year-old restaurant worker, Arthur is among others trying to persuade the Maryland legislature to ease restrictions that now require people to show “good and substantial reason”
to get permits to carry guns.
“It’s an individual right,” he says. The Supreme Court said so in 2008 when it struck down the District of Columbia’s gun ban. He is hoping the Supreme Court will give his cause another boost by saying states and cities can’t interfere with that right.
Sounding Hopeful
But gun-control advocate Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, also sounded hopeful when he talked to reporters outside the court.
“The crucial thing here is to have the court endorse reasonable restrictions,” he said.
And during arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday, it was clear that was the most that gun-control advocates could expect. Still, it is something.
Even Justice Antonin Scalia, a duck hunter and the author of the 2008 ruling, has called reasonable gun restrictions presumptively legal.
He repeated the point yesterday. A lawyer for Chicago and Oak Park, James A. Feldman, was arguing that the decision on the District of Columbia, if extended to cities and states, still allowed bans on some kinds of guns.
“That’s fine,” Scalia said. “We said as much” in the
2008 opinion.
What Is Reasonable
So now we are down to what is reasonable and what isn’t.
The notion of attending a political rally where people angry over health care or anything else are packing heat scares me.
And there have been too many church shootings, including that of Alberta King, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s mother, killed in my hometown one Sunday morning, to feel good about letting guns in church.
Arthur, who says he is a liberal who includes gun rights among the civil rights he supports, makes it clear he thinks the answer to gun violence is to let more people arm themselves.
“Just how would rendering me defenseless protect you from violent criminals,” asks his sign.
I get that argument. But the notion of everyone around me packing pistols wherever I go gives me no comfort.
Oak Park banned handguns in 1984 after a former policeman smuggled a gun into a post-divorce proceeding and shot and killed the judge and his ex-wife’s lawyer, who lived in Oak Park. Their killings drove friends and family to push for gun control.
Anyone for a reverse Second Amendment?
(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
For Related News and Information:
Top legal stories: TLAW <GO>
More Woolner columns: NI WOOLNER <GO>
More Bloomberg columns: NI COLUMNS BN <GO> and OPED <GO>
--Editors: Jim Rubin, James Greiff.
To contact the writer of this column:
Ann Woolner in Atlanta at +1-404-507-1314 or [email protected].
To contact the editor responsible for this column:
James Greiff at +1-212-617-5801 or [email protected].
