Again
I woke up this morning to our now shared American experience of reading or watching news of another mass killing by a person using a rifle developed for the purpose of killing other people.
Just before 7 pm, a man walked into a bowling valley in Lewiston, Maine carrying what has been described as an “AR style” rifle. He opened fire and when he was done minutes later, 16 people were dead and more than a dozen were injured, two more have since died.
As part of our new national ritual “thoughts and prayers” flowed from the Twitter/X accounts of people who could do something to stop this, but don't.
The AR-15 and its many variants and clones were developed to give military forces the ability to direct rapid, highly destructive, fire at an enemy. They are designed to incapacitate or kill. The variants used by our military (M-16, M-4, etc) feature automatic and three round burst settings, which are not legally available to the general population. Most police forces are equipped with the AR-15 semi-automatic versions, which are also for sale to the general population. AR-15s are relatively easy to modify into automatic weapons, which when accompanied with extended magazines makes the incredibly deadly.
Heller vs District of Columbia is probably the most gun-rights friendly decision handed down by the Supreme Court in this century, if not in its history. The majority decision contains an analysis of the 2nd Amendment written by Justice Scalia that I recommend (link here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf)
The decision also contains this paragraph
" 2. 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. (Pp. 54–56.)”
One of the arguments used by the NRA against any sort of legislation to control gun possession is "the slippery slope," which holds that once you get on a slippery slope you're going all the way down. Restrict access to one class of guns and next thing you know, they're all restricted; require a national registry and next thing you know, Nazis will be marching in Charlottesville (Oh, wait...).
We live on a democracy and living in a democracy means we live on a slippery slope and it is up to us to decide what's too slippery or too steep, and to self correct if we think we've gone to far, or not far enough. Yes, there are certain right enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but the Supreme Court has held that most are not absolute. Those rights exist as guardrails for us as we make *political* decisions about our shared future.
I used to chafe at 1st Amendment boosters who insisted the right to "express yourself" was absolute (it isn't) and I thought they we're infantilizing the 1st Amendment by asserting it allowed them to act however they pleased with no consequence. Those 2nd Amendment boosters who push an absolutist interpretation are worse. The NRA -- following the "revolt in Cincinnati" in 1977 -- have worked to tear down any restrictions on weapon ownership and possession, regardless of whether it meets the common sense test or is desired by the local populace. They would sacrifice public safety in order to act as they please, when they please, with what they please. This is not the behavior of responsible citizens in a republic.
We don't have to be in this place. We don't have to wake up, morning after morning, to horrific newscasts. The Supreme Court has said this is a political issue, not a constitional one. We can elect representatives at the state and federal level who have the courage and common sense to make the changes we need.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact. When Supreme Court Justice Robert H Jackson wrote that in a dissenting opinion in 1949 he was figuratively referring to a free speech issue that dealt with lies and disinformation he feared could imperil the Republic. Are we, today, to assign a more literal interpretation to those words?