If firearms safety is something the administration wants to ensure for Americans, I suggest that the Federal Government fund shooting clubs around the country. Instructors, firearms and shooting ranges would be made available to anyone who doesn’t have a felony conviction and is age appropriate.

My proposal would help stimulate the economy by creating truly shovel-ready jobs. Clubs would require instructors and employees to run the range and new shooting ranges would need to be built. Already existing ranges could be refurbished.

Club members wouldn’t be required to own their own firearms. The clubs would have different types of guns that the government would purchase from American owned firearms manufactures. The same goes for ammunition. Members could use their own firearms if they chose.

 Those who can afford a modest fee would do so while those who can’t would get free membership. But most of the costs would be paid for by the Federal Government, including subsidized ammunition. As the President mentions in his editorial last Sunday, this is a matter of national safety. Club members would be taught how to safely use, clean and store firearms.

In the President’s article written for the Arizona Daily Star, he mentions the Tucson shooting and an unstable person’s ability to purchase a firearm. “A man our Army rejected as unfit for service; a man one of our colleges deemed too unstable for studies; a man apparently bent on violence, was able to walk into a store and buy a gun.”

My proposal would make it easier to identify unstable personalities. Other club members and administrators would interact with unstable people so as to be able to report behavior that might make someone a dangerous gun owner.

Membership would be purely voluntary so as not to interfere with 2^nd Amendment and Free Association Rights. But inexpensive access to gun clubs would be too good a deal to pass up for most.

Gun clubs that are mostly paid for by federal and perhaps state entities would help put the gun debate to rest once and for all. Some interpret the 2^nd Amendment as only applying to “A well regulated Militia.” The gun clubs would fit the definition of a Militia. Members wouldn’t undergo modern military training, but learning how to shoot straight while remaining safe fits the definition of a regulated militia, as understood by the founders

The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of Wayne S. Smith, claiming he was denied a concealed permit solely because he’s not a U.S. citizen. Smith has lived in the United States for 30 years after emigrating from the United Kingdom.

In his piece he states:

 
“That’s right, we don’t need it. If no one had guns, would we really be that bad of a country?

“According to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, more than 100,000 people are shot and killed annually on average. The framers originally intended for militias to be created. With the number of city, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies, they should be able to round up every gun in America. We’re paying these people; so let them do what they do.

“If guns were banned totally, our crime rates would be similar to that of countries such as England; our gun-related homicide rate is 44 times that of developed countries England and Wales, says the Brady Center.”

Clearly Martin doesn’t see that crime is on the rise in England and Wales, and that guns aren’t even “banned totally” in those nations. In countries where guns are in fact “banned totally,” such as China, there are still plenty of illegal guns. Does Martin really believe that if guns are banned there wouldn’t be crime or illegal guns?

And is he serious when he asks, “would we really be that bad of a country?” But let’s consider what else Martin says. He also calls for dumping the 22^nd Amendment, which limits the term a President can serve in office. Of course Martin states, “Franklin Delano Roosevelt is consistently voted the best president in American history,” which is true according to who or what poll? Today FDR is being seen in a new light, as a president that had policies that probably extended the economic downturn of the Great Depression, and who caved to pressure from the Soviet Union, which resulted in the Iron Curtain across Eastern Europe.

But by getting rid of the 22^nd Amendment, and the 14^th Amendment, and by stating, “With the number of city, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies, they should be able to round up every gun in America,” Martin calls for essentially a dictatorship.

OK, at the end it is clear Martin doesn’t really believe all of this… the problem is that he did quote the Brady Center, a group that probably would like to see all the guns in this country gathered up. And the other problem is that there are some idealists who do believe that what is suggests wouldn’t be so bad. Let’s just hope they don’t get their wish.

It is too early to celebrate now. Despite the Heller ruling, the District of Columbia is being accused of not honoring the mandate set by The Court. But all freedom loving Americans can feel good that their rights can’t be trampled on by rogue politicians who manipulate voter’s emotions for their own gain. It’s not surprising to learn that the cities with the strictest gun laws have the highest gun violence. Today, the highest court in the land is restoring law abiding citizens something most people of the world can’t enjoy. Thank God for America.

Now that my skeptical credentials are out of the way, I am stunned to report that Chicago’s Mayor Daley wants to sue gun manufactures in the World Court. The Hague may hear and rule on a legal case that could infringe on your 2^nd Amendment Rights and impact our Constitution and ultimately our sovereignty.

Six years ago the Illinois Supreme Court dismissed a $433 million lawsuit against the gun industry filed by Chicago. At yesterday’s Richard J. Daley Global Cities Forum, Daley and more than a dozen mayors from around the world passed a resolution seeking “redress against the gun industry through the courts of the world” in The Hague.

Daley told a news conference that, “This is coming from international mayors. They’re saying, ‘We’re tired of your guns, America. … We don’t want those anymore because guns kill and injure people’”.

Philadelphia’s Mayor Nutter (an appropriate last name) added, “People are being killed every day in the United States of America with illegal weapons. I love the 2^nd Amendment. [But], I have a 1^st Amendment right not to be shot.”

Besides being a nut, Mayor Nutter is poorly educated. The 1^st Amendment deals with freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the freedom to assemble and the freedom to petition the Government. The 1^st Amendment has nothing to do with firearms, self-protection or the right to life.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard Cassauban claimed 85% of the illegal weapons used by Mexican drug cartels come from the United States and therefore The Hague is a proper forum to hear the grievance. FirearmsTruth has been investigating this claim for nearly a year. The truth is 85% of all traceable weapons come from the United States. Traceable weapons only make up 17% of the weapons used by Mexican drug cartels. That means over 83% of weapons come from sources other than the United States.

The World Court is normally reserved for disputes between nations and crimes against humanity. It doesn’t have the jurisdiction to interfere in our laws and interpretation of The Constitution. To keep a legal product from law-abiding citizens because some choose to act outside the law is Un-American. I’m not sure what oath Daley took when becoming mayor, but all elected officials should uphold and support our constitution; not the wishes of foreigners.

“Bear Arms” means to carry. When interpreting the Constitution the courts look too the language of the time the law was enacted. Arms included things like muskets, rifles and pistols. No one in the 18^th Century had any notion of atomic weapons and their destructive force. In fact, the notion of destroying a city with any weapon was abhorrent to Europeans at the time. Large civilian population areas were not supposed to be turned into a battlefield.

 Strictly interpreted, the 2^nd Amendment only gives you the right to carry single-shot black powder firearms. It’s at this point that courts looks to modern improvements in technology and balance it with the intent of the law. Legitimate uses of firearms are examined and compared to illegitimate uses. For example, a person could hunt with a machinegun but this would violate the spirit of hunting and would be a public hazard. In other words, courts apply common sense when interpreting gun laws.

The main argument for allowing handgun ownership has to do with self-protection. Rifles and shotguns can be hard to wield and are burdensome compared to handguns. No one can seriously argue an atomic weapon is a useful weapon for self-protection. They are weapons meant to protect nations and armies, not individuals.

So next time your gun hating friend brings up a ridiculous argument, point out how laws are interpreted. Language, intent and common sense are used. After crushing your friend, invite him or her to go target shooting. You may create a convert.

Some may wonder why a new lawsuit was required after the Heller decision. Chicago and DC had similar gun laws, making handgun ownership illegal in most cases. The difference here is that DC is on federal land, while Chicago belongs to the State of Illinois. The first ten amendments to the constitution, popularly known as the Bill of Rights, were written to restrict what the federal government could do. For example, in the 18^th Century, many European countries had official, government backed religions. The 1^st Amendment denies the federal government the power to establish an official American religion. But the Bill of Rights didn’t apply to the states and their local municipalities.

Several states had established churches and southern states were able to ban abolitionist literature. In the 1833 case Barron v Baltimore, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bill of Rights provided “security against the apprehended encroachments of the general government — not against those of local government.” It took a civil war, the reconstruction era 14^th Amendment and Supreme Court rulings before the Bill of Rights became applicable to the states piecemeal.

In the next installment of Guns and the Law we’ll look at Article I of the 14^th Amendment and how it applies to the McDonald v. Chicago case.

From all of these cases, including hearing whether the 2^nd Amendment applies to the states, Yahoo has a picture of a police officer holding up an anti-gun right poster. There are no other pictures. In fact the story’s opening paragraph is about Sonia Sotomayor being the first Hispanic justice. But her photo isn’t shown. It is clear that Yahoo is biased against your 2^nd Amendment Right, which is fine if expressed on the editorial page. But when bias becomes part of the hard news, that news organization becomes suspect and should be avoided.

In an online editorial today, the Washington Post championed a change in gun control laws through the Supreme Court. Sometime next year The Court will hear McDonald v Chicago, in which Chicago residents challenged the constitutionality of that city’s broad and strict gun laws.

The editorial gives a good historical recap of how various Circuit Courts have grappled with this question, some citing precedents that go back to the 19^th Century. Obviously, constitutional law has changed since then. Back in those days something we take for granted like the 4^th Amendment’s warrant requirement for a search and seizure didn’t apply to the states.

In the recent Heller decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the 2^nd Amendment applied to anyone on federal land. This struck down as unconstitutional the District of Columbia’s draconian gun laws. The Washington Post argues that it wouldn’t be logical to allow a 2^nd Amendment right for the people who live in DC while denying that right to those of us who live off federal land.

Where the Washington Post is wrong is in its argument that large cities should be allowed to have stricter gun control laws than in rural areas. The Post claims that because urban areas are densely populated stricter gun control is needed for public safety. But the opposite is true. It is from these densely populated areas that we get most of our violent crime. One reason crime is lower in rural areas is because criminals know many of these residents own firearms. If the same can become true for urban areas, crime will go down because the risk will outweigh the benefit.