What the US needs is domestic disarmament, not gun control, so says a George Washington University professor. He notes that universal background checks are no good because we already own too many guns, and that
"if you believe that one can tell which mental patients will resort to mass shootings, and that most of these can be stopped by therapists, there are several bridges in Brooklyn I would like to sell you."Here's the money shot:
"Advocates of gun control frequently cite the much lower levels of gun violence in other developed nations -- such as Canada and the UK -- in support of the measures they promote. However, these very low levels of gun violence have not been achieved by gun control but -- by domestic disarmament."He incorrectly states that
"the Supreme Court, after 250 years in which the Second Amendment was read as allowing only a well-regulated militia to have guns, recently reinterpreted it to mean that there is an individualized right to own guns."In their opinion of June 26, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court stated, “Every late-19th-century legal scholar that we have read interpreted the Second Amendment to secure an individual right unconnected with militia service.”
In 2007 the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. stated, “To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad)."
He then goes on to state that until such time as the president can stack the Supreme Court with anti-gunners, we may have to get to domestic disarmament through the back door through a ban on the sale of ammunition.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amitai-etzioni/needed-domestic-disarmame_b_8739712.htmlPerhaps Marcus Tullius Cicero said it best when he wrote, “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.”
