Brick by brick, the Bush administration is systematically dismantling the protections the country has built over the past several decades against the threat of illegal guns and gun violence.
The Justice Department filed briefs before the Supreme Court Monday that argue the Constitution “broadly protects the rights of individuals” to own firearms. This reverses the official position of the government for more than 60 years–including the Republican administrations of Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. It contradicts numerous judicial opinions and rulings that have asserted that the 2nd Amendment allows gun ownership not as an individual right but only in the context of a “well regulated militia.”
Just as surprising is the silence from many Democrats in Congress. Either they’ve been cowed by Bush’s high ride in the polls, or fear that bringing up gun control in a period of public insecurity may appear politically wimpy. There is no reason to cower: The public broadly supports gun control, and its advocates ought to be on the offensive.
Leading the revisionist charge is Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, who, to his credit, has been straightforward about his position on gun control: He opposes it, practically under any circumstances.
But this latest broadside is the most serious yet. By arguing that gun ownership is a constitutionally protected individual right, except in the narrowest of circumstances, the federal government is embracing the position of the National Rifle Association and groups that oppose even the most common-sense forms of gun control.
Candidate George W. Bush didn’t conceal his opposition to stricter gun controls, though his campaign was embarrassed by NRA boasts that it planned to set up an office in the White House. With Ashcroft at Justice, that has hardly been necessary.
Shortly after taking office, Ashcroft sought to roll back FBI record-keeping of gun sales from 90 days to 24 hours. He said that gun owners’ privacy might be compromised, which is but an echo of the NRA line that argues record-keeping amounts to de facto federal gun registration.
A preliminary review by the General Accounting Office at the time argued that such hasty and unprecedented destruction of government records could allow felons and the mentally ill to obtain guns, and even hamper any audit of the integrity of the system. Since 1998, the background checks by the FBI have blocked tens of thousands of unqualified people from buying guns.
A few months after Sept. 11–in an astonishing case of zealotry trumping national security–Justice Department officials refused to let the FBI review records of background checks. The FBI was trying to find out if any of the 1,000 people detained after the Sept. 11 attacks had purchased guns.
Larry Todd, police chief in Los Gatos, Calif., and a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s firearms committee, put it best: “The decision has no rational basis in public safety,” he said. “It sounds to me like it was made for narrow political reasons based on a right-to-bear-arms mentality. If someone is under investigation for a terrorist act, all the records we have in this country should be checked, including whether they bought firearms.”
As a Missouri senator, Ashcroft labored mightily to defang the Brady gun-control law. He introduced an amendment ordering the destruction of background records immediately after a gun purchase. It was defeated–and he was later defeated in a re-election bid–but he seems hell-bent on getting his way, one way or another.
That the 2nd Amendment protects collective–rather than individual–gun ownership is not exotic jurisprudence, as the historian Garry Wills has exhaustively researched and explained.
The first draft of the amendment, the one James Madison put on the table for consideration, said: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”
The neatly edited version that was ultimately approved reads: “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.”
The NRA and other gun advocates have done additional editing by excluding the first sentence and using the second to argue for virtually unfettered gun ownership: Outdoors, at home or at work; handguns, shotguns, machine guns; concealed or in the open, with any kind of ammunition money can buy.
That position, and the Justice Department argument to the Supreme Court Monday, fly in the face of legal opinions that date back to 1939, when the court ruled that the “obvious purpose” of the 2nd Amendment was “to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness” of state militia forces. “It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.”
Four other Supreme Court cases and more than 20 lower court cases since then have reaffirmed the intent of the 2nd Amendment.
Later this month, the Supreme Court is expected to consider appeals of two convictions for gun-control violations. One involves possession of a gun while under a domestic violence restraining order, the other the case of a man convicted of illegally owning two machine guns. By arguing to overturn those convictions the Justice Department violates decades of efforts aimed at containing the gun violence epidemic in this country.
There are more than 200 million guns in circulation in this country. That’s an awesome number, enough guns for every adult American and then some. By launching this ill-advised assault on gun control, the Bush administration ignores the will of Congress, the history of the courts and the public’s opinion.
