geeky
The Second Amendment of the US Constitution 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." Many people believe this to give individual Americans a right to gun ownership, and there is legal precedent to support this, although there is debate among legal experts if this is what this means. In q 1991 appearance on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, former US Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger told the hosts that the Second Amendment "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interest groups."
Firearms regulation advocates argue that restricting and tracking gun access would result in safer communities, and keep guns out of the hands of those that shouldn't have them, such as violent criminals and persons with mental illnesses. Gun rights advocates state that increased firearm ownership by law-abiding citizens reduces crime. They say that criminals have always had easy access to firearms.
On Dec. 15, 1791, ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution were ratified. These became known as the Bill of Rights. The second of them said: “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.” For over a century, guns were bought and sold virtually unrestricted by federal law. The first piece of national gun control legislation was passed on June 26, 1934. The National Firearms Act (NFA) was part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal for Crime". It was intended to combat gangland violence of that era such as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The NFA imposed a tax on the manufacturing, selling, and transporting of firearms listed in the law. These included short-barrel shotguns and rifles, machine guns, firearm mufflers and silencers. Due to constitutional issues, the NFA was modified several times. The $200 tax, which was high for the era, was put in place to curtail the transfer of these weapons.
Roosevelt also signed the Federal Firearms Act (FFA) of 1938. This law required gun manufacturers, importers, and dealers to obtain a federal firearms license. It also defined a group of people, including convicted felons, who could not purchase guns, and mandated that gun sellers keep customer records. The FFA was repealed in 1968 by the Gun Control Act (GCA), though many of its provisions were kept in place.
In 1939 the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case United States v. Miller, and the court held that through the National Firearms Act of 1934, Congress could regulate the interstate selling of a short barrel shotgun. The court stated that there was no evidence that a sawed off shotgun “has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” The court concluded, “we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.”
Following the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968. This law repealed and replaced the FFA, updated Title II of the NFA to fix constitutional issues, added language about “destructive devices” (such as bombs, mines and grenades) and expanded the definition of “machine gun.” The bill banned importing guns that have “no sporting purpose,” imposed age restrictions for the purchase of handguns (gun owners had to be 21), prohibited felons, the mentally ill, and others from purchasing guns, required that all manufactured or imported guns have a serial number, and according to the ATF, imposed “stricter licensing and regulation on the firearms industry.”
In 1986 the Firearm Owners Protection Act was passed by Congress. The law was designed as protections for gun owners. It prohibited a national registry of dealer records, it limited inspections by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to once per year (unless the subject of the inspections had multiple infractions), it changed the definition of “engaging in the business” of selling firearms, and it allowed licensed dealers to sell firearms at “gun shows” in their state. It also loosened regulations on the sale and transfer of ammunition. The bill also codified some gun control measures, including expanding the GCA to prohibit civilian ownership or transfer of machine guns made after May 19, 1986, and redefining “silencer” to include parts intended to make silencers.
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 is named after White House press secretary James Brady, who was shot and permanently disabled from an injury suffered during an attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. The Brady Bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. It required background checks to be completed before a gun is purchased from a licensed dealer, manufacturer or importer. It also established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), maintained by the FBI. Clinton also signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, which contains the assault weapons ban, a temporary prohibition on the purchase of such weapons, which was in effect from September of 1994 to September of 2004. When the prohibition period ended, multiple attempts were made to renew the ban, but all have failed. The provisions of the bill outlawed the ability to “manufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon,” unless it was “lawfully possessed under Federal law on the date of the enactment of this subsection.” Nineteen military-style assault weapons, including AR-15s, TEC-9s, MAC-10s, could not be manufactured or sold. It also banned “certain high-capacity ammunition magazines of more than ten rounds.”
The Tiahrt Amendment, sponsored by Republican Congressman Todd Tiahrt of Kansas, prohibited the ATF from publicly releasing data showing where criminals purchased their firearms and stipulated that only law enforcement officers or prosecutors could access such information. This amendment has been criticized by a number of sources. In 2010, the Washington Post wrote, “The law effectively shields retailers from lawsuits, academic study and public scrutiny. It also keeps the spotlight off the relationship between rogue gun dealers and the black market in firearms.” Efforts to repeal this amendment have this far been unsuccessful.
In 2005, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was signed by President George W. Bush. It prevented gun manufacturers from being named in federal or state civil suits by those who were victims of crimes involving guns made by that company. The first provision of this law reads that its purpose is “to prohibit causes of action against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers of firearms or ammunition products, and their trade associations, for the harm solely caused by the criminal or unlawful misuse of firearm products or ammunition products by others when the product functioned as designed and intended.” It also dismissed pending cases on October 26, 2005.
The Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller overturned part of the nearly 70-year precedent set by Miller in 1939. While the Miller ruling focused on the “well regulated militia” portion of the Second Amendment (known as the “collective rights theory” and referring to a state’s right to defend itself), Heller focused on the “individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.” Heller challenged the constitutionality of a 32-year-old handgun ban in Washington, D.C., and found, “The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment.” It did not nullify other gun control provisions. Reasons for judgement stated that “the Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” .
On December 19, 2016, during the Presidential transition of Donald Trump, the Social Security Administration issued the Implementation of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007. Under this rule, this agency had to report to the Attorney General recipients found to be disabled in order for them to be added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. To qualify for reporting, an individual would have had to meet three criteria: (1) determination by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority that a person, as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease, is a danger to himself or to others; and (2) that the person was receiving full disability benefits and couldn't find work and (3) they require the assistance of a third party to manage their own benefits. It was estimated that around 9% of the disability awardee population would have met this criteria (75,000 individuals). The law was supported by the ACLU,[4] the National Association for Mental Health, The American Association of People with Disabilities, and the National Council on Disability, as well as other disability rights advocates. The regulation was supported by the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence, Moms Demand Action Against Gun Violence, and others.
On February 2, 2017, this regulation was repealed by a vote of 235-180 in the House, mostly along party lines. 229 Republicans and 6 Democrats voted in favor, while 2 Republicans and 178 Democrats voted against. The United States Senate passed the repeal on February 15, 2017. Democrats Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, along with Independent Angus King of Maine, joined with all the Republicans in approving the bill. The repeal was signed into law by President Donald Trump on February 28, 2017.
Since the Parkland shooting, President Trump has said he wants to strengthen background checks, and has even said at times that he would consider supporting universal checks that would apply to private sales and gun show sales. But his new school safety plan doesn’t advocate for such comprehensive background checks. In February of 2018, he instructed the Justice Department to develop regulations that would ban bump stocks, devices that are used to make legal semi-automatic weapons fire similarly to machine guns. In March, the Department formally submitted a regulation to ban the accessories, which now needs to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget. The President has said, via Twitter, that bump stocks “will soon be out.”
His school safety plan includes the idea of arming teachers. Under the plan, the federal government will work with states to provide voluntary “rigorous” firearms training for “specially qualified” school personnel. He has said that “highly trained expert teachers will be allowed to conceal carry, subject to State Law. If schools are mandated to be gun free zones, violence and danger are given an open invitation to enter. Almost all school shootings are in gun free zones. Cowards will only go where there is no deterrent!”
President Trump has reconsidered an earlier proposal to raise the age limit to buy semiautomatic weapons. According to the Washington Post, he had been interested in the idea of raising the minimum age to purchase a semiautomatic weapon from 18 to 21, and White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said at the end of February that raising the age of purchase is “on the table for us to discuss.” But this was not included in his school safety plan. Under his school safety plan, Education Secretary Besty DeVos will chair a commission to recommend further policy and funding proposals on school safety, which could include age restrictions, but there is no set timeline on when the commission will report findings.
After the Parkland shooting, the President also suggested that law enforcement should be able to take guns away from people they think are safety risks without going through the courts. His new plan doesn’t go that far, but he has called for an expansion of mental health programs and enhanced coordination between mental health care, schools and law enforcement.
Stronger gun control legislation by any president likely calls for new consideration of the Second Amendment, and that likely required a different composition of the Supreme Court, and is unlikely to happen in the near future. It looks like the issue of gun control and the appropriate response to gun violence will rest on the president's desk for many administrations to come.