Constitutional Law

We pause now for a bit of gloating

From a 1998 statement by the American Bar Association, to the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution:

"Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

The American Bar Association appreciates the opportunity to submit its views to you on issues arising under the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The ABA serves as the national voice of the legal profession and has over 400,000 members. I am David W. Clark, of Jackson, Mississippi. I currently serve as the Chair of the ABA's Coordinating Committee on Gun Violence. I submit this statement at the request of the President of the ABA, Philip S. Anderson.

There is considerable confusion and misunderstanding about the meaning of the Second Amendment and its relationship to the power of the federal government to enact laws regulating firearms in private hands. In fact, our concern about the widespread misunderstanding of the law in this area caused our House of Delegates, in August 1994, to adopt a resolution calling on the legal profession to "...join and work with our counterparts in the medical, teaching, religious, civic, law enforcement and other professions, to ...educate the public and lawmakers regarding the meaning of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, to make widely known the fact that the United States Supreme Court and lower federal courts have consistently, uniformly held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution right to bear arms is related to a well-regulated militia and that there are no federal constitutional decisions which preclude regulation of firearms in private hands."

Few issues have been more distorted and cluttered by misinformation than this one. We agree with the views of former Solicitor General (and Dean of Harvard Law School) Erwin N. Griswold, expressed in his November 4, 1990, Washington Post column, "Phantom Second Amendment Rights," that the debate then ongoing as to a proposed ban on assault weapons should spend little time on "the unsupportable claim that restrictions would violate the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms."

There is no confusion in the law itself. Federal and state court decisions in this century have been uniform in the view that the Second Amendment permits the exercise of broad power to limit private access to firearms by all levels of government. The strictest gun control laws in the nation have been upheld against Second Amendment challenge, including a ban on handguns imposed locally."

Full post as published by Of Arms and the Law on March 28, 2011 (boomark / email).