Issue 24: Gun Control
David B. Kopel || Research Director, Independence Institute
Second Amendment rights are very important to tens of millions of Americans. Many of those Americans are apprehensive about the Obama administration’s intentions regarding those rights. Such apprehensions led to a tremendous increase in firearms sales in the months before and after the election.
On the one hand, candidate Obama repeatedly proclaimed that he considered the Second Amendment to be an individual right. On the other hand, he claimed that the Washington, D.C. handgun ban (which the Supreme Court declared to be unconstitutional last June, in District of Columbia v. Heller) was a reasonable, common-sense restriction on that right.
As a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama proposed a national ban on carrying concealed handguns. Such a ban would take away a right that millions of law-abiding Americans currently exercise — to carry a handgun for lawful protection, after passing a background check and a safety class. In the U.S. Senate and the Illinois Senate, Obama compiled a near-perfect record in voting for bans on a wide variety of guns, for lawsuits against gun manufacturers and gun stores, and for a host of other restrictions on gun owners. He even proposed outlawing all gun stores within five miles of a school or park — which would eliminate gun stores from almost all of the inhabited portions of the United States.
Thus, the Second Amendment right which Obama claims to support appears to be one of vanishingly small proportions.
Second Amendment supporters are also concerned about his choices to put Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emmanuel, and Eric Holder into key positions in his administration—for every one of them has a solid record as an advocate of highly restrictive gun control.
At best, Second Amendment supporters can hope that the Obama administration will concentrate on other issues. At worst, the Obama administration may push for repressive and extreme gun controls with the same vigor as did the Clinton administration, but with considerably more political skill.
David Kopel is Research Director at the Independence Institute, a think tank in Golden, Colorado. He is co-author of the law school textbook Gun Control and Gun Rights (NYU Press). He was one of the three lawyers who sat at the counsel table to assist Alan Gura’s presentation of the oral argument in the Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller.
Recent Responses
That Heller was a victory for 2nd Amendment rights cannot be questioned; whether these rights can be protected against “common sense” regulation is quite another matter. Anyone who has read the writings of the Founders cannot question their intent, or the wisdom behind an armed citizenry. It is also clear that we will have to fight hard to maintain these rights in the Obama administration.
The degree to which Obama disregards a provision of the Bill of Rights is scary. To the person from Europe who hasn’t seen a “shred” of evidence that gun control and crime control go hand in hand, see “More Guns Less Crime” by economist and statistician John Lott. Think of it this way, criminals don’t care about gun control laws, they are already committing crimes. Gun control laws only disarm the law abiding.
Gun owning American’s better be perpared for a hairy gun control roller coaster ride, this is for sure based on his congressional record. For those that think restrictive gun control will lower crime, better look at FBI Uniform Crime Reports, and research done on gun control, one will find that gun control is an utter failure. Before you balk and say that its bias pro-gun research, many of these researchers are liberals such as Gary Kleck who actually endorse gun control. Wake up and smell the coffee, Gun ban Obama is here.
In response to the person from Europe. If gun control really works to stop violence, then why is England getting worse? Murders and other violent crimes are on the rise. Don’t blame the porous borders, Enland is an Island. Gun control was never about crime and violence prevention. Its simply about disarming normal family people, and in the mean time those in London actually think they are completely safe. No only the ruling elite are safe and of course the criminals who still have the means to hurt the unarmed. England tried to disarm Americans in the late 1700’s guess what happened?
If Obama supporters are right and he is focused on the economy, then the 2nd Amendment rights as applied to self defense is still very much a concern. As the economy worsens some may even turn to crime. I have notice a huge jump home invasions. Crime is correlated with the health of the economy. So while he is looking for ways to create more social programs, thus expanding the government to supports these programs, he should also be more sympathetic to those of us who fully understand the courts all over the U.S. including SCOTUS (Castle Rock v. Gonzales) that the police are NOT obligated to protect us, and they (police) cannot be held accountable for failing to enforce (PPO’s) Personal Protection Orders. In this bad economy, now is not the time to mess with our natural rights to self defense or defense of our loved ones and homes.
Coming from a European background and having traveled the world a fair bit, I am highly supportive of Obama’s tendencies towards much more restrictive gun control. Everywhere outside of the U.S. that I’ve been to, there has been a much more restrictive culture towards firearms and in exactly all those very same countries around the world, gun-related injuries and deaths are at a far, FAR lower number (per capita) than they are here.
Their crime rates in general are also typically much lower, and I have yet to see a single shred of evidence to refute the claims that the two facts (stronger gun restrictions, lower crime) are unrelated.
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