Gun rights 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 ... 

Generally, gun rights advocates want gun ownership to be treated in a way similar to speech or writing. Every adult citizen who does not have a criminal or mental health record should be able to own and carry the gun of his or her choice with minimal restrictions (such as banning guns in some public places like schools). Any criminal who commits a crime with that firearm, however, should be prosecuted and punished. 

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. 

Gun rights advocates (including a small group of doctors such as Edgar A. Suter) have attacked the medicalization of the gun issue. Philosophi-... 

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 rights advocates, however, see such efforts as an attempt to stretch reasonable concepts of liability into a form of backdoor gun control, in effect obtaining through the courts what they could not obtain through political means. They argue that if such suits are widely successful, gun manufacturers may be forced out of business, or at least forced to market only expensive handguns, affordable only by the well-off and by criminals. Thus, in a law journal article, Philip D. Oliver warns that... 

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. 

Gun rights advocates suggest that the same reference to the militia might imply that an individual would have the right to carry a weapon that if of a military nature (such as a fully automatic AK-47 or M-16 rifle). They also note that the defendant was not represented and that, therefore, the judges heard only one side of the case. (They also note in passing that short-barreled shotguns and carbines were in fact military weapons used by some cavalry units.)... 

This case illustrates a possible path that the Supreme Court might take if it ever revisits its view of the Second Amendment in Miller v. U.S. The decision here implies that the Supreme Court s rejecting constitutional protection for a nonmilitary weapon doesn t necessarily mean that possession by an individual of a military weapon outside an organized military context would be protected. Gun rights advocates view such an approach as contradictory and as a failure to honor the intent of the Constitution s framers. 

This decision is an example of a court upholding what is called a discretionary gun permit. Gun rights advocates often argue that such laws amount to gun control for everyone except well-connected and favored persons who have an inside track with the police chief or sheriff. Accordingly, they have sometimes organized successful campaigns to remove the element of discretion from gun permit laws. 

In general, courts find that a local law is preempted by the state only when at least one of the following is true (1) the state and local laws contradict each other or (2) the state law says it intends to preempt or effectively does so by exhaustively covering the subject matter. Gun rights advocates have sometimes tried (with only modest success) to enact state laws with more moderate gun controls, hoping to prevent municipalities from passing stricter controls. 

Dizard, Jan E., Robert Merrill Muth, and Stephen P. Andrews, Jr. Guns in America A Reader. New York New York University Press, 1999. Provides more than 40 selections covering topics such as the origin of the gun control movement, the pros and cons of gun ownership, minorities and guns, the militia movement, and possible compromises between gun control and gun rights advocates. 

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