{"id":14283,"date":"2022-06-03T09:05:41","date_gmt":"2022-06-03T16:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=14283"},"modified":"2022-06-02T13:00:33","modified_gmt":"2022-06-02T20:00:33","slug":"opinion-ban-assault-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/?p=14283","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Ban Assault Weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"

The high-powered AR-15, military-style assault weapon used to massacre school children and teachers at Sandy Hook<\/a> (2012) and Uvalde<\/a> (2022) is a semi-automatic version of the M-16 that I used in Vietnam (1968). It was engineered to inflict maximum damage<\/a> upon human beings. It has no legitimate civilian use. <\/p>\n

By 2021, there were an estimated 20 million<\/a> AR-15s legally in circulation within the U.S., procured at an average cost of $800<\/a>. This likely produced some $16 billion in revenues for the small arms industry.<\/p>\n

The AR-15’s widespread availability is an obscenity. It exists courtesy of the same Republican hypocrites<\/a>, who dare call themselves “pro-life” while infringing upon women’s reproductive liberties; yet, offer<\/a> little more than feckless “thoughts and prayers” when faced with unbridled American carnage.<\/p>\n

It is an obscenity wrought by the Republicans’ refusal<\/a> to reinstate the 1994 federal Assault Weapons Ban<\/a>, which stood up to Constitutional challenge and helped curb similar mass shootings for a decade. That Act prohibited<\/a> the manufacture, transfer and civilian possession of specific makes and models of military-style, semi-automatic firearms and large capacity magazines (allowing more than 10 rounds), while containing an exemption for weapons sold before the Act went into effect.<\/p>\n

The GOP bastardization of the Constitution and the right to life, liberty and a pursuit of happiness was enhanced by District of Columbia v. Heller<\/i><\/a> (2008), a 5-4 decision in which the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority overruled a 1939 SCOTUS precedent. For the first time in our nation’s history, the opinion, authored by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, held that the Second Amendment created an individual’s<\/em> right to possess a firearm unconnected to service in a State militia.<\/p>\n

In his compelling dissent, the late Justice John Paul Stevens excoriated the Court’s right-wing majority for ignoring the Second Amendment’s language, history and context, all of which revealed that the “right to bear arms” was intended to apply only<\/i> to a State’s right to maintain a “well-regulated Militia<\/em>“. Stevens even cited the Oxford English dictionary’s explanation at the time that to “bear arms” meant serving “as a soldier”. Scalia, a self-declared “originalist”, who claimed to be bound by the original meaning of the text of the Constitution, conveniently ignored that original meaning of our nation’s founding document.<\/p>\n

Even assuming the Court’s “Radicals-in-Robes<\/a>” were correct — that the Second Amendment authorizes all individuals to “bear arms” — that right would certainly be no more absolute than the carefully limited rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. The right to free speech, for example, does not create<\/a> a right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater or to incite imminent violence. The Court has long held that public safety, in those instances, trumps the First Amendment’s “guarantee” of free speech.<\/p>\n

If we value our lives and those of our children, We the People must work towards a total ban on the manufacture, sale and civilian possession of the AR-15 and all other assault-style weapons. We must do so irrespective of substantial legal and political obstacles, which include the extortion-like threats of violence offered<\/a> by right-wing extremists if the government sought to take their guns away.<\/p>\n

Neither we nor our fragile democracy will be safe so long as these deadly military-grade weapons are left in the hands of domestic terrorists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/center>Ernest A. Canning is a retired attorney, author, and Vietnam Veteran (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968). He previously served as a Senior Advisor to Veterans For Bernie<\/a>.<\/span> Canning has been a member of the California state bar since 1977. In addition to a juris doctor, he has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science. Follow him on twitter: @cann4ing<\/b><\/a><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The high-powered AR-15, military-style assault weapon used to massacre school children and teachers at Sandy Hook (2012) and Uvalde (2022) is a semi-automatic version of the M-16 that I used in Vietnam (1968). It was engineered to inflict maximum damage upon human beings. It has no legitimate civilian use. By 2021, there were an estimated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[508,1144,551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antonin-scalia","category-john-paul-stevens","category-nra"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}