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| Self-immolation |
America burning: righteous self-immolation
Editing, comment by
Carolyn Bennett
U.S. Constitution provides no right of individuals to keep and bear arms guns
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 thus reads the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States.
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he National Rifle Association (not unlike religionists) cherry
picks texts without regard for contexts, historical and otherwise ─ “right of
the people to keep and bear arms.” Even more ridiculously, their mantra: lock
and load, arm all of “us,” everybody else is a “terrorist,” shoot to kill, take no prisoners. “Keep me and mine safe.”
But the Supreme Court of the United States and appeals courts
have focused on ‘well-regulated militia’
and ‘security of a free State’ to rule that Second Amendment rights are
reserved to states and their militias – what are today National Guards.
“Since the Supreme Court’s unanimous Miller decision in
1939,” Jeff Cohen wrote in a 2000 article, “all federal appeals courts, whether
dominated by liberals or conservatives, have agreed that the Second Amendment
does not confer gun rights on individuals.”
U.S. v. Miller legacy
Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in U.S. v. Miller [307
U.S. 174, 1939], the meaning of the Second Amendment, as a matter of law, has
been settled.
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n Miller, the Court ruled that the ‘obvious purpose’ of the
Second Amendment was to ‘assure the continuation and render possible the
effectiveness’ of the state militia. And since Miller, the Supreme Court has
addressed the Second Amendment twice more, upholding New Jersey’s strict gun
control law in 1969 and upholding the federal law banning felons from
possessing guns in 1980. Furthermore, twice (1965 and 1990), the U.S. Supreme
Court has held that the term ‘well-regulated militia’ refers to the National
Guard.
After the town was sued on Second Amendment grounds, the
Illinois Supreme Court and the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that
not only was the ordinance valid, but there was no individual right to
keep and bear arms
under the Second Amendment (Quillici v. Morton Grove). In October 1983,
the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of this ruling, allowing the
lower court rulings to stand.
In 1991, former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren
Burger, a Minnesotan who identified himself as “a gun man,” addressed the
Second Amendment drama:
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| U.S. Supreme Court interior view |
The subject of one of the greatest
pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud’ on the American public by special
interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime... [the NRA] ha(s) misled
the American people and, I regret to say, they have had far too much influence
on the Congress of the United States than, as a citizen, I would like to see.
The very language of the Second
Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen
an unfettered right to any kind of weapon...
[S]urely the Second Amendment does
not remotely guarantee every person the constitutional right to have a ‘Saturday
Night Special’ or a machine gun without any regulation whatever.
There is no support in the
Constitution for the argument that federal and state governments are powerless
to regulate the purchase of such firearms...
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| U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger |
Fifteenth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court - Warren Burger
Described as a justice with conservative leanings considered
an “originalist,” who delivered a variety of “transformative” decisions during his tenure, Warren Earl Burger (b. September 17, 1907, d. June 25, 1995)
was Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1969 to 1986.
He was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the son of Swiss German
descendants, his father a traveling salesman and railroad cargo inspector, his grandfather
an immigrant from Switzerland who at 14 age had joined the Union Army, was later wounded
in the Civil War, and received the Medal of Honor.
W
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arren Burger grew up on the family farm near the edge of
Saint Paul, graduated high school then attended University of Minnesota night
school, while selling insurance life; and in 1931, graduated magna cum laude from
William Mitchell College of Law (then St. Paul College of Law) and entered
private law practice.
In 1952, at the Republican convention, Burger played a key
role in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s nomination by delivering the Minnesota
delegation. After he was elected, President Eisenhower appointed Burger as the
Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division of the Justice
Department. In 1956, Eisenhower appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia Circuit and Burger remained on the Court of Appeals
for thirteen years. In 1969, President Richard M. Nixon nominated Burger to the
Chief Justice position. On September 26, 1986, Burger retired and led the campaign to mark the 1987 bicentennial of the United
States Constitution. He commissioned the construction of the
Constitution Bicentennial Monument (The National Monument to the U.S. Constitution).
Inheritors dispense with reason and foolishly wedge, divide, undermine
Despite a prevailing truth in law, special interest groups
continue to generate tremendous support for individual right to keep and bear
arms while claiming that no Article of the Bill of Rights is more important to
the preservation of human liberties. They have succeeded in making the Second
Amendment one of the most controversial legal issues in this country.
“As a result,” Media critic and author Jeff Cohen concludes,
“the United States remains the only nation whose citizens can still, to a broad
extent, exercise the right to keep and bear arms”; and this right “has cost the United States dearly
in lives of persons killed by the disaffected, the unstable and the emotionally
ill.”
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ays-God-Guns wedging evades critical underlying issues.
Concerning the right-left black-white dance over guns, Jeff
Cohen writes, while “a correlation between gun laws and gun deaths is too
obvious to ignore; mainstream journalists often ignore another key factor” that
contributes to the United States’ inordinately high violent crime rate: poverty.
But there many other underlying issues: poverty, violence (not all shooters are insane, clinically
impaired or “criminals” ─ why are they so angry or paranoid or in a state of
hatred?); bribery and influence peddling in government; Americans’
self-important penchant for blaming, deepening the social divide ─ instead of coming
together and confronting and solving critical human problems for the common
good.
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t is interesting to me that Chief Justice Warren Burger was considered
conservative, was appointed to the
high court by Republican presidents; and
also led the U.S. Supreme Court in some of most progressive rulings in U.S.
history. Though Burger held for Georgia cases against sodomy (1986) and reinstatement
of the death penalty (1976), he led the Supreme Court’s:
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Board of Education (1971), a unanimous ruling supporting busing to reduce de facto racial segregation in
schools
United States v. U.S. District
Court (1972), another unanimous ruling against the Nixon Administration’s
desire to invalidate the need for a search
warrant and the requirements of the Fourth Amendment in cases of domestic surveillance
Furman v. Georgia (1972), a 5-4
decision invalidating all death penalty
laws then in force, (although he dissented from the decision).
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| U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger |
Roe v. Wade (1973) voting with the
majority to recognize a broad right to
privacy that prohibited states from banning abortions
Emphasized maintenance of Checks
and Balances between the branches of government
United States v. Nixon (July 24,
1974), in a unanimous 8-0 decision in against President Nixon’s attempt to keep
several memos and tapes relating to the Watergate Affair private.
Immigration and Naturalization
Service v. Chadha (1983), Burger held for the majority, that Congress could not
reserve a legislative veto over executive branch actions.
One of the reasons American society overall fails to make
continuous progress is that Americans in all matters deal in blacks and whites, distortion and misrepresentation, right, righteous, and wrongs. There is no discussion, no give and take, no real
debate, no deliberation or self-reflection in this country. Everybody and his
or her group engage in grandstanding and selfish self-perpetuation, pushing sound
bites and grabbing a penny’s worth of fame.
Sources and notes
“Gun Control, the NRA and the Second Amendment” (By Jeff
Cohen, a version of this appeared in Brill's Content, February 2000), http://fair.org/article/gun-control-the-nra-and-the-second-amendment/
Jeff Cohen
Associate professor in journalism, author, media critic and
lecturer Jeff Cohen is founding director of the Park Center for Independent
Media at Ithaca College (New York). Cohen is 1986 founder the media watch group
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) in 2011 the online activist group
RootsAction.org.
Cohen was senior producer of MSNBC’s Phil Donahue primetime
show until it was terminated three weeks before the Iraq invasion. His latest
book is Cable News Confidential: My
Misadventures in Corporate Media.
“RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS” http://www.lincoln.edu/criminaljustice/hr/Arms.htm
Continued: Since
the Miller decision, lower federal and state courts have addressed the meaning
of the Second Amendment in more than thirty cases. In every case, up until
March of 1999 (see below), the courts decided that the Second Amendment refers
to the right to keep and bear arms only in connection with a state
militia.
Even more telling, in its legal challenges to federal
firearms laws like the Brady Law and the assault weapons ban, the National
Rifle Association makes no mention of the Second Amendment.
Indeed, the National Rifle Association has not challenged a
gun law on Second Amendment grounds in several years.
More about right to keep and bear arms Websites:
Legal Theory of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms
The Second Amendment and the Historiography of the Bill of
Rights
The Second Amendment and the Ideology of Self-Protection
Second Thoughts on the Second Amendment
The Second Amendment Foundation
Historic Supreme Court Decisions
http://www.lincoln.edu/criminaljustice/hr/Arms.htm
Lincoln University Criminal Justice Program, Lincoln
University, PA 19352, http://www.lincoln.edu/criminaljustice/
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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