This chapter presents a sample of the arguments used by the opponents of strong federal gun control to support their position over the last several decades. Please see Chapter 9 for the arguments put forward by supporters of strong federal gun control.
I believe it is absolutely imperative that, rather than focusing on and punishing law-abiding citizens who want nothing more than to provide for their families by engaging in a lawful enterprise and producing a legal product, we ought to focus our law enforcement efforts on the criminals. Indeed, we have found through programs such as Project Exile in Richmond, Virginia, and Texas Exile in my own …
There is no dispute that just 150 miles from here, in sleepy Richmond, Virginia, they cut gun homicides by one-half in just one year. They employed the awesome simplicity of enforcing existing federal gun law. It's called Project Exile. The word is out on the streets of Richmond that, if you're a felon caught with a gun, you WILL go to jail for five years. They're actually cha…
Let me first say that I strongly support our Constitutional right to own firearms under the Second Amendment. However, I do not believe this is an absolute right which would allow convicted criminals and other miscreants to lawfully own firearms. In fact, federal law currently prohibits gun ownership by those persons who are, among other things, a fugitive from justice, convicted of a felony, addi…
As crime and firearms legislation comes before the U.S. Senate, I carefully evaluate each bill's merits on reducing and discouraging criminal violence and the effect on the rights of law-abiding citizens to own firearms. A large majority of members, including myself, support the Second Amendment. I will vote against sweeping proposals such as Sen. Chafee's [R-RI] bill to "proh…
… I think because there is emotion, it is important for members of Congress to look at gun control not based on philosophical bias but based on empirical data and objectivity…. I am going to talk about an article that was in the March Journal of Medicine, which is the publication of the Georgia Association of Medicine [David B. Kopel, "The Allure of Foreign Gun Laws"]&#…
I have constantly been amazed by the indifference or even hostility shown the Second Amendment by courts, legislatures, and commentators. James Madison would be startled to hear that his recognition of a right to keep and bear arms, which passed the House by a voice vote without objection and hardly a debate, has since been construed in but a few, and most ambiguous, Supreme Court decisions, where…
The constitutional right of the people to keep arms has deep roots in common law and constitutional history, and it remains of fundamental importance to this day. This right is explicitly guaranteed in the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights and includes the keeping by private citizens of any hand-carried arms commonly used by private individuals and police for personal defense. Because "…
Gun laws fail because they do not address the issue. The issue is not possession of firearms, but misuse of firearms. We cannot expect criminals to abide by gun laws when they have already shown a disregard for law and order by their criminal activity. The only people ever affected by gun laws are peaceful, law-abiding citizens, who never abuse their firearms right. Recent research is finding gun …
They are not rights which are granted to us by the federal government, but rights with which the Constitution forbids the federal government to interfere. Thus the Second Amendment does not "grant" the right to keep and bear arms, but protects it from usurpation. Note that the amendment doesn't say this right may not be abolished. It goes farther. It says it may not even be in…
The problem of crime is criminals, not guns. Less than .2% of all firearms in the United States are used for illegal purposes…. The other 99.8% are used legally for hunting, target shooting, for protection. The crime problem is created by the small percentage of people who have discovered that our lenient legal system makes it easier for them to prey on innocent victims than to work a respe…
Men such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry were very emphatic about the need for such an amendment prior to ratification of the Constitution, protesting that as first submitted, the document did not guarantee "the right of having arms in your own defense." So important was the right to bear arms to our forefathers that it was placed second in the Bill of Rights, with freedom of expre…
[There should be] legislation designed to reduce crimes committed with weapons by instituting mandatory, strict sentences for any person convicted of using a gun during the commission of a crime…. [and] prohibit[ing] the granting of a suspended sentence or a probationary sentence for any federal felony committed with a firearm. Gun control laws will only result in a large criminal network o…
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