Gun control advocates

Gun control advocates generally want to exert a maximum effort to keep guns away from persons who are likely to use them irresponsibly. Gun rights advocates want to use a combination of education and law enforcement to deter gun abuse. However, people who don t have strong feelings one way or the other might well ask Why not compromise and do a bit more of both ... 

Ever since then, gun control advocates have argued that the Second Amendment thus applies only to bearing arms as part of an organized militia, which today is the National Guard ... 

Reaction to the worst social turmoil since the 1930s led to a second great wave of federal gun legislation. Gun control advocates pointed out that Lee Harvey Oswald had obtained through the mail the rifle he had used to kill John E Kennedy. (Such sales were already illegal under the 1927 act, but there was little practical enforcement.)... 

Gun rights advocates questioned whether these tight new laws would actually have any effect on crime. Gun control advocates endorsed a 1969 report by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, which had undertaken a massive study of the conditions that had led to urban riots and other violence during the preceding decade. The commission s report recommended national regulation of handguns and. 

Another big victory for gun control advocates came in 1994 with the passage of the Violent Crime Control Act, which banned the manufacture, sale, and import of a large variety of semiautomatic weapons such as the Uzi, Tec-9, and similar copycat weapons. The list of banned weapons was later expanded, but weapons manufactured or imported before the ban... 

Gun control advocates point out, however, that a gun is an impulse weapon —it takes only the pull of a trigger to commit an irrevocable act. Gun injuries are also much more likely to be fatal, while people who try other means of suicide often survive. 

Medical and sociological gun control advocates have also pointed out that such countries as Britain and Japan, with strict firearm controls, have far lower homicide rates than the United States. Gun rights activists question whether such cross-cultural comparisons are valid, noting that European and Japanese societies are more conformist and that it is social control, not gun control, that is responsible for their low rate of violence. 

Although the extent of the problem and the efficacy of the cure are in dispute, gun control advocates make a powerful appeal when they suggest that only comprehensive gun control can stop killings in schools, workplaces, and on the streets. They hope that this appeal, combined with already strong support for gun control, will enable them to overcome the political power of the NRA and other gun rights advocates. 

Gun control advocates hail such legal efforts as an attempt to at long last hold an irresponsible industry accountable for the consequences of its marketing of dangerous products. They claim that the result will be safer guns and fewer crimes and accidents. 

The precedent for the effort is the successful legal campaign against the tobacco industry that began in 1994. The result was a 250 billion settlement to be shared by 46 states. Gun control advocates and litigators point to similarities between the tobacco and gun industries. They argue that both... 

Another target of concern for gun control advocates is heavy. 50 caliber rifles, whose bullets can pierce light armored vehicles or puncture chemical storage tanks, perhaps causing a major fire or explosion. However, no such attacks have yet occurred, and it is uncertain whether single-shot heavy rifles would really be the choice of terrorists when weapons like car bombs are so easy to construct. 

Besides the guns themselves, gun records also became the subject of confrontation. The U.S. attorney general, John Ashcroft, has refused to allow records from firearms back ound checks to be used by terrorism investigators. New York senator Charles Schumer (a prominent gun control advocate) has argued that every day the FBI is barred from using this [back ound check] information, the investigatory trail grows colder. 

In the interest of even-handedness, the author has adopted the term gun control advocates to refer to those seeking to maintain or to increase restrictions on... 

This decision is rather confusing. Some gun control advocates say that it means that the right to bear arms is not protected at all by the Second Amendment. Gun rights advocates, however, say that it is simply a statement of the basic doctrine that the Constitution does not create rights but declares or affirms rights arising out of the common or natural law. 

This decision gained some recent relevance with the formation of many private militias in the 1980s. Gun control advocates see Presser as denying any constitutional protection to such organizations, as well as reaffirming that the Second Amendment is not a bar to state or local gun regulations. 

This view of the state constimtional provision is close to the viewpoint of most modern gun control advocates with regard to the Second Amendment Only the right of the state to form and operate a militia is protected the legislature is free to regulate or even prohibit the individual carrying of weapons. Certainly few people would assert that anyone has the right to carry a weapon while drunk. 

This short, rather cryptic decision has been interpreted in two different ways in the continuing debate over the meaning of the Second Amendment. Gun control advocates cite it as clearly stating that the Second Amendment must be interpreted in terms of the militia clause and does not give individuals the right to keep and bear any sort of firearm they want. 

Gun control advocates observe, however, that the Court has not directly revisited the issue of the scope and applicability of the Second Amendment in the more than 60 years since Miller was decided. However, the case of U.S. V. Emerson (1999) does set up a conflict between appeals circuits over interpretation of the Second Amendment. 

In another major victory for gun control advocates. Congress passes the Assault Weapons Ban Bill, which bans 19 semiautomatic firearms described as assault weapons. ... 

Veteran movie actor Charlton Heston is elected president of the National Rifle Association, in what is viewed by many gun control advocates as an attempt to rehabilitate the organization s somewhat tarnished image. 

October Ten random persons are killed and three injured by Washington, D.C. -area anonymous snipers. The shootings, revealed later to have been done with a high-powered Bushmaster rifle by Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allan Muhammad, are used by gun control advocates to argue for extending and expanding the bans on such weapons. 

Their policies range from the permissive (all law-abiding adults) to the highly restrictive (must show a definite need), cop-killer bullet Term for armor-piercing ammunition popularized by gun control advocates. The term gets its name on the basis that it especially endangers police wearing bullet-proof vests, curios and relics Firearms that are at least 50 years old or that are considered (because of their scarcity, historical value, or unusual nature) to be collector s items. A federal firearms license (FFL) is required for interstate purchase of such firearms. 

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