I'm not sure what the big "flap" over this is. It seems to me that the way things are everyone has the ability to obtain any gun they might need for any legitimate purpose. And, some people who have demonstrated poor impulse control or serious lapses in judgment can't legally have guns.

Does the right-wing really want more and bigger, maybe fully automatic, weapons in the hands of anyone who wants them? (Is anyone who wants full auto by definition not mentally stable enough to have one?)

Do they want no limitation on the magazine capacity?

What for?

How about size? Should the availability of that be limited? Who, besides me in rush hour traffic, needs a 50 caliber machine gun? Again,
what for? How about small cannons? Slightly bigger cannons? Is there any line?

Should everyone be mandated to carry a loaded weapon at all times? Would that protect us from foreign or a deranged domestic government? Or encourage a "polite" society? (The folks who believe that are naive enough to think they don't have flanks or a rear. And there will always be more of 'em than the badguys. That they will always be more ready to take action than the badguys. And the badguys won't get the "drop" on them. Pretty naive.)

I'm serious, for once. What does this citizenry need with more guns?

New York Times Editorial -- May 14, 2002

An Ominous Reversal on Gun Rights

Using a footnote in a set of Supreme Court briefs, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a radical shift last week in six decades of government policy toward the rights of Americans to own guns. Burying the change in fine print cannot disguise the ominous implications for law enforcement or Mr. Ashcroft's betrayal of his public duty.

The footnote declares that, contrary to longstanding and bipartisan interpretation of the Second Amendment, the Constitution "broadly protects the rights of individuals" to own firearms. This view and the accompanying legal standard Mr. Ashcroft has suggested - equating gun ownership with core free speech rights - could make it extremely difficult for the government to regulate firearms, as it has done for decades.

That position comports with Mr. Ashcroft's long-held personal opinion, which he expressed a year ago in a letter to his close allies at the National Rifle Association. But it is a position at odds with both history and the Constitution's text. As the Supreme Court correctly concluded in a 1939 decision that remains the key legal precedent on the subject, the Second Amendment protects only those rights that have "some reasonable relationship to the preservation of efficiency of a well-regulated militia." By not viewing the amendment as a basic, individual right, this decision left room for broad gun ownership regulation. The footnote is also at odds with Mr. Ashcroft's pledge at his confirmation hearing that his personal ideology would not drive Justice Department legal policies.

It is hard to take seriously Mr. Ashcroft's assertion that the Bush administration remains committed to the vigorous defense and enforcement of all federal gun laws. Mr. Ashcroft, after all, is an official whose devotion to the gun lobby extends to granting its request to immediately destroy records of gun purchases amassed in the process of conducting Brady law background checks even though they might be useful for tracking weapons purchases by suspected terrorists.

The immediate effect of the Bush Justice Department's expansive reading of the Second Amendment is to undermine law enforcement by calling into question valuable state and federal gun restrictions on the books, and by handing dangerous criminals a potent new weapon for challenging their convictions. What it all adds up to is a gift to pro-gun extremists, and a shabby deal for everyone else.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Arf