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Step Two: How We Avoid the Trap
(we'll use an Assault Weapons Ban as an example)
The Second Amendment is not absolute. In fact, it actually says, “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The word regulate is only in the U.S. Constitution three times, and the other two times involve commerce and money. Many gun enthusiasts seem to forget that the Second Amendment includes the words well regulated, which is made easier by the fact that the National Rifle Association (NRA) left these words completely out when they put the wording of the Second Amendment on the wall of their headquarters lobby.
In its ruling on the court case District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court said this: "Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those 'in common use at the time' finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons."
Since 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear many Second Amendment cases, including New York’s Open Carry Law (2013), New Jersey’s Concealed Carry Law (2014), San Francisco’s Law on Handguns (2015), New York’s and Connecticut’s Gun Laws (2016), California’s Concealed Carry Law (2017), Maryland’s Assault Weapons Ban (2017), and California’s Firearm Waiting Period (2018).
All that said, forget the Supreme Court cases, the NRA, the slippery slope, or national polls. There is only one reason that 1787 does not CURRENTLY support a federal ban on automatic weapons: simple math.
There are two mathematical equations at work here:
The first equation is the current makeup of the United States Congress. An assault weapons ban does not have the votes to pass — regardless of the political party in power — and introducing one will make the other pieces of legislation we propose harder — if not impossible — to pass. We need to put points on the board ASAP.
The second equation is this: Who kills who, and with what. To solve this challenge, there are really only two questions to ask: Who pulled the trigger in each of these gun-related deaths, and how can we best take guns from their hands. Not everyone’s hands — their hands.
This is a huge distinction that will be the ultimate difference between success and failure. There are already 393,300,000 civilian-held legal and illicit firearms in the United States, and it's estimated that at least 20 million of them are assault weapons. That is over 120 firearms for every 100 people in this country, the highest gun ownership rate in the entire world by far — which makes getting these guns off the streets virtually impossible anyway. The time for action on assault weapons was in 2004 with a renewal of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) but, because Congress did not renew it, they ensured that ship has sailed.
< Note: The data regarding the effectiveness of a ban on large-capacity magazines (LCMs) and assault weapons, particularly Bill Clinton’s loophole-ridden 1994 law, are mixed. There are studies from the Justice Department, Johns Hopkins University, Northeastern University, George Mason University, Columbia University, New York University, Quinnipiac University, and even the Minnesota Department of Corrections, among others. In the end, it does seem like Clinton’s ban resulted in a modest drop in mass killings, but certainly nothing earth shattering. >
It seems to us that the reality of the situation is this: In our current, highly heated political environment, if your strategy is to take guns away from law-abiding people, we think it's highly likely you may lose.
Listen, we are not afraid of a fight. If we honestly thought banning assault weapons was the best solution, we would fight like hell to make it happen. But it’s just not the most effective way to solve this problem, and the unnecessary battle is going to eclipse everything else we try to do in the name of gun safety.
We need to put points on the board ASAP. We cannot get sidetracked on this issue because the stakes are far too high. Now, let's get to the things that actually can work! Click here.