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        Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, misc.legal,
                    alt.politics.clinton, alt.rush-
                    limbaugh,talk.politics.misc
        Subject: J. Neil Schulman Refutes ACLU Lies
        Date: 19 Feb 1994 16:33:20 -0800
        Organization: University of California, Riverside
        
        Forwarded from t.p.g
        In article <CLEC7w.Gnp@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
                                    <lvc@cbvox1.att.com> wrote:
        
                       REPLY TO THE EXECUTIVES OF
                    THE ACLU OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
                 ON THE MEANING OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT
        
                          By J. Neil Schulman
                  Member, ACLU of Southern California
        
            Includes the complete Prefaces to the U.S. Senate Report
                   "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms"
                   by Senator Orrin Hatch (R., Utah)
               and Senator Dennis DeConcini (D. Arizona)
        
        
        Original materials Copyright (c) 1994 by J. Neil
        Schulman. Permission to reproduce on computer networks,
        echos, and bulletin boards granted so long as unedited.
        All other rights reserved.
        
        
                ACLU materials are shown in [BRACKETS].
        
        
                                  ***
        
        [ACLU                                    NEWS
        of Southern California
           1616 Beverly Blvd.
           Los Angeles, CA  90026
                                      Public Affairs Department
                                         (213) 977-9500 Ext 260
                                    After Hours: (213) 303-3178
        
        For Immediate Use    Contact: ACLU Public Affairs, x260
        Wednesday, Feb. 9, 1994               Mary Tokita, X209
        
                  ACLU OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAUNCHES
                          EDUCATIONAL CAMPAIGN
                ON GUN CONTROL AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT
        
        
             As the nation's oldest and most prominent defender
        of Constitutional Rights, the ACLU of Southern
        California today launched an educational campaign to
        eliminate popular myths about the Second Amendment to
        the U.S. Constitution.
        
             "Governor Wilson's crime summit and other
        political posturing to 'get tough on crime' are not
        focusing on ways to limit violence in our communities,"
        said Ramona Ripston, ACLU executive director.  "We want
        to support one positive and obvious tool that will have
        a direct impact on thousands of lives.  And, as an
        advocate of our freedoms under the U.S. Constitution,
        the ACLU wants to set the record straight on what our
        forefathers truly intended about our right to bear
        arms."
        
             The Second Amendment was written shortly after the
        Revolutionary War when Bill of Rights author James
        Madison and other leaders were still suspicious of any
        centralized government. In that context, the phrase "a
        well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security
        of a free State" reflected a vital concern of that
        time: the ability of states to defend themselves
        against a possibly tyrannical federal government or
        outside threats to the Union.  Equipment and ammunition
        were kept in the house of private citizens because the
        militia of 1792 consisted of part-time citizen-
        soldiers.]
        
             Correct as far as it goes, however it should be
        noted that the threat of abuse of power by the national
        government became significant during the Civil War, and
        has become incrementally greater ever since.  The
        usurpations and abuses of government at all levels in
        this country has never been greater.
        
             ["In four cases in which the Supreme Court
        addressed the issue, it has consistently held that the
        Second Amendment does not grant a blanket right of
        individual gun ownership," said ACLU attorney Alan
        Friel.  "Despite what is commonly believed, the
        Amendment does not prohibit rational and effective gun
        control."]
        
             Both statements are technically true, but
        misleading. First, the Second Amendment does not grant
        the right of individual gun ownership, because that
        right precedes the Bill of Rights; all the Second
        Amendment does is protect that preexisting right.
        Second, constitutional law has never been interpreted
        as granting a "blanket" right to do \anything\ -- and
        that applies to the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments
        as much as it applies to the Second. However, the ACLU
        has historically fought for the most extreme
        protections -- and the harshest limitations on
        exceptions -- to constitutional rights, and it is
        especially pernicious that the ACLU of Southern
        California is arguing against ACLU's traditional role
        of expanding, rather than contracting, the "blanket"
        protections of the Bill of Rights.  As far as whether
        the Second Amendment prohibits rational and effective
        gun control, when some is proposed, we'll see.  No gun
        control law has ever proven to be effective at
        producing the effects for which it was passed: the
        reduction of crimes committed with guns, or even the
        denial of guns to those who most misuse them.
        
             [As part of the campaign, the civil liberties
        group has published a new public education brochure and
        has placed a full-page advertisement in the West Coast
        edition of today's New York Times.  Public speaking and
        other educational activities are also planned.]
        
             This is entirely contrary to the purposes of the
        ACLU, which is an organization devoted to the
        protection of individual civil liberties and rights.
        In effect, the ACLU of Southern California is becoming
        an advocate of greater restrictions on individuals and
        greater police authority in its place.
        
        
                                  ***
        
        [Brochure:
        
        When the
        FOUNDERS
        of the
        United States
        of America
        wrote the
        
        SECOND
        AMENDMENT  ... ->
        
                             __________________________
                .. this      |                        |
                     is      |    Illustration of     |
                    not      |      a handgun         |
                   what      |     being pointed      |
                   they      |        at the          |
                    had      |        reader          |
                     in      |                        |
                  mind.      |                        |
                             _________________________|]
        
        
             This is grandstanding, an attempt to recruit the
        Framers of the Constitution to a point of view held by
        the modern authoritarians of the ACLU of Southern
        California, and entirely antithetical to the actual
        documented reasons and thoughts of those who wrote the
        Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Second
        Amendment in particular.
        
              ["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 Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
        
        
             HAVE YOU ever heard someone say gun control is a
        fine idea -- except that the Second Amendment prohibits
        it?
        
             It's a popular sentiment.  Fortunately, it's not
        true.]
        
             Get that?  \"Fortunately"\ indeed.  The ACLU
        executives' agenda is exposed here: they wish greater
        gun control on the basis of personal opinions which
        have no grounds in ACLU doctrine, and are subverting
        the organization to their own personal ends.  The
        fabrication of history begins here.
        
             [The Second Amendment was never intended as a gun
        license for the entire American populace.  As original
        drafted -- and as consistently interpreted by the
        courts for more than a century --the Amendment does not
        grant any blanket right to own a gun nor does it stand
        in the way of rational, effective gun control.]
        
             The executives of the ACLU of Southern California
        betray their anti-libertarian, authoritarian stance
        when they equate the Second Amendment to a "license":
        they evidently cannot conceive of the Framers' premise
        that rights originate with the individual, instead of
        beginning as grants of privilege or immunity from the
        government, reducing us all again to subjects of a
        ruler.  That was the purpose of the American
        Revolution: to free us from that view of the tyrannical
        relationship between the State and the individual.
        Again, the Second Amendment does not grant the right to
        keep and bear arms, nor does it claim to: it merely
        states that "the right of the people to keep and bear
        arms \shall not be infringed\."  The phrasing itself
        belies the possible interpretation that the Second
        Amendment is a \grant\ of rights. The Framers
        understood that what they were doing was a limitation
        on the powers of the government they were forging.  The
        ACLU executives are confounded by this thought.
        
             [The idea of gun ownership as an American
        birthright is nothing more than a popular myth.]
        
             Throwing the right to keep and bear arms into the
        memory hole portrayed in Orwell's \Nineteen-eighty-
        four\ is worthy of the anti-Semites who claim that the
        Holocaust never happened. Seventy million Americans own
        firearms today.  The sentiments to restrict the
        people's arms were as common at the time of the
        American Revolution as they are today, by those seeking
        a monopoly of force for the State.  As James Madison,
        the chief author of the Bill of Rights put it in
        \Federalist Paper No. 26\, "The advantage of being
        armed . . . the Americans possess over the people of
        all other nations . . . Notwithstanding the military
        establishments in the several Kingdoms of Europe, which
        are carried as far as the public resources will bear,
        the governments are afraid to trust the people with
        arms."
        
             The author of the Bill of Rights was aware that
        the American people being armed was an exception to the
        practice everywhere else on Earth (except Switzerland),
        and that the tendency would be for Americans to revert
        to the common condition of the rest of mankind if the
        right to keep and bear arms was not explicitly
        enshrined in our founding document.  If the right to
        keep and bear arms is nothing more than a popular myth,
        with no basis in the history of our country, how is it
        that this right has survived for two centuries so that
        our civilian population is the best armed in the world?
        
             This should be the first proof to the innocent
        that the executives of the ACLU of Southern California
        are attempting to deceive them about the actual history
        of the right to keep and bear arms, and the Second
        Amendment in particular.
        
             [Yet the controversy over gun control and the
        Second Amendment rages on.]
        
             Why, yes.  Depriving an entire people of the right
        which is the practical defense of all their other
        rights is bound to cause controversy.
        
             [AS THE NATION'S oldest and most prominent
        defender of individual rights, the American Civil
        Liberties Union (ACLU) holds the U.S. Constitution and
        its Bill of Rights in the highest regard.]
        
             Indeed.  I seriously doubt you could get ACLU's
        national executive director, Ira Glasser, or its
        president, Nadine Strossen, to dismiss the Second
        Amendment from the Bill of rights so cavalierly.  They
        are more likely to understand that the weakening of any
        of the Bill of Rights is bound to weaken all the
        others.
        
             [To clear up many misconceptions, here are some
        questions and answers about the Second Amendment and
        gun control.
        
                      ACLU of Southern California
                         Questions and Answers
                        on the Second Amendment
        
             Q  Does the Second Amendment in any way guarantee
        gun rights to individuals?
        
             A  No.  The weight of historical and legal
        scholarship clearly shows that the Second Amendment was
        intended to guarantee that states could maintain armed
        forces to resist the federal government.]
        
             According to Constitutional attorney Don B. Kates,
        Jr., you will not be able to find this position
        supported in \any\ major law- review article, while the
        legal and historical scholarship regarding the Second
        Amendment's protection of an individual right to keep
        and bear private arms is so weighty as to be
        indisputable.
        
             The historical and legal scholarship is most
        authoritative in a February, 1982 report issued by the
        United States Senate's Subcommittee on the
        Constitution, Committee on the Judiciary, titled "The
        Right to Keep and Bear Arms."  To prove that, here are
        the two prefaces from that report, the first by the
        Committee Chairman, Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R., Utah)
        and the second by the Ranking Minority Member, Senator
        Dennis DeConcini (D., Arizona):
        
        Senator Hatch:
        
             In my studies as an attorney and as a United
        States Senator, I have constantly been amazed by the
        indifference or even hostility shown the Second
        Amendment by courts, legislatures, and commentators.
        James Madison would be startled to hear that his
        recognition of a right to keep and bear arms, which
        passed the House by a voice vote without objection and
        hardly a debate, has since been construed in but a
        single, and most ambiguous, Supreme Court decision,
        whereas his proposals for freedom of religion, which he
        made reluctantly out of fear that they would be
        rejected or narrowed beyond use, and those for freedom
        of assembly, which passed only after a lengthy and
        bitter debate, are the subject of scores of detailed
        and favorable decisions. Thomas Jefferson, who kept a
        veritable armory of pistols, rifles and shotguns at
        Monticello, and advised his nephew to forsake other
        sports in favor of hunting, would be astounded to hear
        supposed civil libertarians claim firearm ownership
        should be restricted. Samuel Adams, a handgun owner who
        pressed for an amendment stating that the "Constitution
        shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people of
        the United States who are peaceable citizens from
        keeping their own arms," would be shocked to hear that
        his native state today imposes a year's sentence,
        without probation or parole, for carrying a firearm
        without a police permit.
        
             This is not to imply that courts have totally
        ignored the impact of the Second Amendment in the Bill
        of Rights. No fewer than twenty-one decisions by the
        courts of our states have recognized an individual
        right to keep and bear arms, and a majority of these
        have not only recognized the right but invalidated laws
        or regulations which abridged it. Yet in all too many
        instances, courts or commentators have sought, for
        reasons only tangentially related to constitutional
        history, to construe this right out of existence. They
        argue that the Second Amendment's words "right of the
        people" mean "a right of the state"--apparently
        overlooking the impact of those same words when used in
        the First and Fourth Amendments. The "right of the
        people" to assemble or to be free from unreasonable
        searches and seizures is not contested as an individual
        guarantee. Still they ignore consistency and claim that
        the right to "bear arms" relates only to military uses.
        This not only violates a consistent constitutional
        reading of "right of the people" but also ignores that
        the second amendment protects a right to "keep" arms.
        These commentators contend instead that the amendment's
        preamble regarding the necessity of a "well regulated
        militia . . . to a free state" means that the right to
        keep and bear arms applies only to a National Guard.
        Such a reading fails to note that the Framers used the
        term "militia" to relate to every citizen capable of
        bearing arms, and that Congress has established the
        present National Guard under its power to raise armies,
        expressly stating that it was not doing so under its
        power to organize and arm the militia.
        
             When the first Congress convened for the purpose
        of drafting a Bill of Rights, it delegated the task to
        James Madison. Madison did not write upon a blank
        tablet. Instead, he obtained a pamphlet listing the
        State proposals for a bill of rights and sought to
        produce a briefer version incorporating all the vital
        proposals of these. His purpose was to incorporate, not
        distinguish by technical changes, proposals such as
        that of the Pennsylvania minority, Sam Adams, or the
        New Hampshire delegates. Madison proposed among other
        rights that "That right of the people to keep and bear
        arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well
        regulated militia being the best security of a free
        country; but no person religiously scrupulous of
        bearing arms shall be compelled to render military
        service in person." In the House, this was initially
        modified so that the militia clause came before the
        proposal recognizing the right. The proposals for the
        Bill of Rights were then trimmed in the interests of
        brevity. The conscientious objector clause was removed
        following objections by Elbridge Gerry, who complained
        that future Congresses might abuse the exemption to
        excuse everyone from military service.
        
             The proposal finally passed the House in its
        present form: "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." In this form it was submitted into the
        Senate, which passed it the following day. The Senate
        in the process indicated its intent that the right be
        an individual one, for private purposes, by rejecting
        an amendment which would have limited the keeping and
        bearing of arms to bearing "For the common defense".
        
             The earliest American constitutional commentators
        concurred in giving this broad reading to the
        amendment. When St. George Tucker, later Chief Justice
        of the Virginia Supreme Court, in 1803 published an
        edition of Blackstone annotated to American law, he
        followed Blackstone's citation of the right of the
        subject "of having arms suitable to their condition and
        degree, and such as are allowed by law" with a citation
        to the Second Amendment, "And this without any
        qualification as to their condition or degree, as is
        the case in the British government." William Rawle's
        "View of the Constitution" published in Philadelphia in
        1825 noted that under the Second Amendment: "The
        prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution
        could by a rule of construction be conceived to give to
        Congress a power to disarm the people. Such a
        flagitious attempt could only be made under some
        general pretense by a state legislature. But if in
        blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should
        attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a
        restraint on both." The Jefferson papers in the Library
        of Congress show that both Tucker and Rawle were
        friends of, and corresponded with, Thomas Jefferson.
        Their views are those of contemporaries of Jefferson,
        Madison and others, and are entitled to special weight.
        A few years later, Joseph Story in his "Commentaries on
        the Constitution" considered the right to keep and bear
        arms as "the palladium of the liberties of the
        republic", which deterred tyranny and enabled the
        citizenry at large to overthrow it should it come to
        pass.
        
             Subsequent legislation in the second Congress
        likewise supports the interpretation of the Second
        Amendment that creates an individual right. In the
        Militia Act of 1792, the second Congress defined
        "militia of the United States" to include almost every
        free adult male in the United States. These persons
        were obligated by law to possess a firearm and a
        minimum supply of ammunition and military equipment.
        This statute, incidentally, remained in effect into the
        early years of the present century as a legal
        requirement of gun ownership for most of the population
        of the United States. There can be little doubt from
        this that when the Congress and the people spoke of a
        "militia", they had reference to the traditional
        concept of the entire populace capable of bearing arms,
        and not to any formal group such as what is today
        called the National Guard. The purpose was to create an
        armed citizenry, which the political theorists at the
        time considered essential to ward off tyranny. From
        this militia, appropriate measures might create a "well
        regulated militia" of individuals trained in their
        duties and responsibilities as citizens and owners of
        firearms.
        
             If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this
        type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing
        upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by
        such legislation. That they cannot do so after a
        century and a half of trying--that they must sweep
        under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in
        the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the
        1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and
        State levels in 1965-1976--establishes the repeated,
        complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control
        serious crime.
        
             Immediately upon assuming chairmanship of the
        Subcommittee on the Constitution, I sponsored the
        report which follows as an effort to study, rather than
        ignore, the history of the controversy over the right
        to keep and bear arms. Utilizing the research
        capabilities of the Subcommittee on the Constitution,
        the resources of the Library of Congress, and the
        assistance of constitutional scholars such as Mary
        Kaaren Jolly, Steven {\sic\} Halbrook, and David T.
        Hardy, the subcommittee has managed to uncover
        information on the right to keep and bear arms which
        documents quite clearly its status as a major
        individual right of American citizens. We did not guess
        at the purpose of the British 1689 Declaration of
        Rights; we located the Journals of the House of Commons
        and private notes of the Declaration's sponsors, now
        dead for two centuries. We did not make suppositions as
        to colonial interpretations of that Declaration's right
        to keep and bear arms; we examined colonial newspapers
        which discussed it. We did not speculate as to the
        intent of the framers of the second amendment; we
        examined James Madison's drafts for it, his handwritten
        outlines of speeches upon the Bill of Rights, and
        discussions of the second amendment by early scholars
        who were personal friends of Madison, Jefferson, and
        Washington and wrote while these still lived. What the
        Subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear--
        and long-lost--proof that the second amendment to our
        Constitution was intended as an individual right of the
        American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful
        manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his
        freedoms. The summary of our research and findings
        forms the first portion of this report.
        
             In the interest of fairness and the presentation
        of a complete picture, we also invited groups which
        were likely to oppose this recognition of freedoms to
        submit their views. The statements of two associations
        who replied are reproduced here following the  report
        of the Subcommittee. The Subcommittee also invited
        statements by Messr. Halbrook and Hardy, and by the
        National Rifle Association, whose statements likewise
        follow our report.
        
             When I became chairman of the Subcommittee on the
        Constitution, I hoped that I would be able to assist in
        the protection of the constitutional rights of American
        citizens, rights which have too often been eroded in
        the belief that government could be relied upon for
        quick solutions to difficult problems.
        
             Both as an American citizen and as a United States
        Senator I repudiate this view. I likewise repudiate the
        approach of those who believe to solve American
        problems you simple become something other than
        American. To my mind, the uniqueness of our free
        institutions, the fact that an American citizen can
        boast freedoms unknown in any other land, is all the
        more reason to resist any erosion of our individual
        rights. When our ancestors forged a land "conceived in
        liberty", they did so with musket and rifle. When they
        reacted to attempts to dissolve their free
        institutions, and established their identity as a free
        nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When
        they sought to record forever a guarantee of their
        rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to
        nothing but the protection of their right to keep and
        bear arms against government interference. Under my
        chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will
        concern itself with a proper recognition of, and
        respect for, this right most valued by free men.
        
                                         Orrin G. Hatch,
                                               Chairman,
                       Subcommittee on the Constitution.
                       January 20, 1982.
        
        Senator DeConcini:
        
             The right to bear arms is a tradition with deep
        roots in American society. Thomas Jefferson proposed
        that "no free man shall ever be debarred the use of
        arms," and Samuel Adams called for an amendment banning
        any law "to prevent the people of the United States who
        are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
        The Constitution of the State of Arizona, for example,
        recognized the "right of an individual citizen to bear
        arms in defense of himself or the State."
        
             Even though the tradition has deep roots, its
        application to modern America is the subject of intense
        controversy. Indeed, it is a controversy into which the
        Congress is beginning, once again, to immerse itself. I
        have personally been disappointed that so important an
        issue should have generally been so thinly researched
        and so minimally debated both in Congress and the
        courts. Our Supreme Court has but once touched on its
        meaning at the Federal level and that decision, now
        nearly a half-century old, is so ambiguous that any
        school of thought can find some support in it. All
        Supreme Court decisions on the second amendment's
        application to the States came in the last century,
        when constitutional law was far different that it is
        today. As ranking minority member of the Subcommittee
        on the Constitution, I, therefore, welcome the effort
        which led to this report--a report based not only upon
        the independent research of the subcommittee staff, but
        also upon full and fair presentation of the cases by
        all interested groups and individual scholars.
        
             I personally believe that it is necessary for the
        Congress to amend the Gun Control Act of 1968. I
        welcome the opportunity to introduce this discussion of
        how best these amendments might be made.
        
             The Constitution subcommittee staff has prepared
        this monograph bringing together proponents of both
        sides of the debate over the 1968 Act. I believe that
        the statements contained herein present the arguments
        fairly and thoroughly. I commend Senator Hatch,
        chairman of the subcommittee, for having this excellent
        reference work prepared. I am sure that it will be of
        great assistance to the Congress as it debates the
        second amendment and considers legislation to amend the
        Gun Control Act.
        
                       Dennis DeConcini,
                       Ranking Minority Member,
                       Subcommittee on the Constitution.
                       January 20, 1982.
        
        
             [Most scholars overwhelmingly concur that the
        Second Amendment was never intended to guarantee gun
        ownership rights for individual personal use.  Small
        arms ownership was common when the Bill of Rights was
        adopted, with many people owning single-shot firearms
        for hunting in what was then an overwhelmingly rural
        nation.]
        
             What "scholars" concur that the Second Amendment
        was not intended to make such a guarantee would still
        have a hard time explaining away the clauses
        guaranteeing the right to keep and bear arms in 45 of
        the 50 state constitutions today.  Why would state
        constitutions need to guarantee the right to keep and
        bear arms, if the only meaning of that phrase is to
        protect state governments from the federal government?
        And given that the right to keep and bear arms was --
        as the ACLU executives themselves admit -- common at
        the time of the Bill of Rights' ratification, the
        individual right to keep and bear arms would be
        otherwise guaranteed by the \Ninth\ amendment to the
        U.S. Constitution, which states, "The enumeration in
        the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
        construed to deny or disparage others retained by the
        people."
        
             It should also be noted that the ACLU executives,
        in attempting to portray the right to keep and bear
        arms as something antiquated and outdated, focus on the
        fact that the technology of the time had only reached
        the stage of single-shot firearms.
        
             Are they willing to apply that reasoning to the
        rest of the U.S. Constitution?
        
             The first amendment's guarantee of free exercise
        of religion wouldn't apply to the Mormons or the
        Christian Scientists; there were no Mormons or
        Christian Scientists in the 1790's when the Bill of
        Rights was added to the Constitution.
        
             The first amendment's guarantee of freedom of the
        press wouldn't apply to anything printed using
        photography, or computer typesetting or offset
        printing, nor would the guarantees of freedom of speech
        apply to the broadcast media, or anything using
        telephones or telegraphs -- none of which existed in
        the 1790's.
        
             The fourth amendment's guarantees of freedom from
        unreasonable searches wouldn't apply to electronic
        wiretapping or the use of laser listening devices; nor
        satellite or infrared observation -- the framers
        couldn't have possibly conceived of any of them.
        
             Nor, I suppose, could the United States have an
        Air Force or spy satellites, since there is no
        authorization anywhere in the Constitution for anything
        other than land or naval armed forces.
        
             Why is it that arguments such as this are never
        brought up with respect to any constitutional issue
        relating to progress, except when it is to destroy the
        people's right to keep and bear arms?
        
             And how can it be that the American Civil
        Liberties Union of Southern California is controlled by
        persons who are so quick to divide the Bill of Rights
        so to allow authoritarians to conquer it?
        
             [Q  Does the Second Amendment authorize Americans
        to possess and own any firearm they feel they may need?
        
             A  Clearly, no.  The original intent of the Second
        Amendment was to protect the right of states to
        maintain state militias.]
        
             And who were the militia?  According to George
        Mason, who refused to sign the U.S. Constitution
        because it did not yet have a Bill of Rights, the
        militia "consist now of the whole people."
        
             [Private gun ownership that is not necessary to
        the maintenance of militias is not protected by the
        Second Amendment.]
        
             That is just backwards.  The arms that individual
        militia members own \are\, by definition, the militia
        arms.
        
             [Q  Does the Second Amendment allow government to
        limit --even prohibit -- ownership of guns by
        individuals?
        
             A  Yes.  Federal, state and local governments can
        all regulate guns without violating the Second
        Amendment.]
        
             Repeating this assertion without proof does not
        change it from false to true.  Such proof is impossible
        because of repeated court decisions over the last two
        centuries which state just the opposite.  While it is
        true that the Supreme Court of the United States has
        never enforced the Second Amendment as clearly as gun-
        rights activists would hope, neither has it ever ruled
        against the Second Amendment as protecting an
        individual right to keep and bear arms.  Specific
        citations will follow as the ACLU document brings them
        up.
        
             [State authorities have considerable powers to
        regulate guns. The federal government can also regulate
        firearm ownership, although some scholars believe that
        the federal power may not be as extensive as that of an
        individual state.]
        
             There is no disputing that the right to keep and
        bear arms is under attack both legislatively and in the
        courts, and there have, indeed, been some adverse
        lower-court decisions, allowing infringements on these
        rights of the people.  This does not change either the
        historical facts of the establishment of the right to
        keep and bear arms in protections offered by the U.S.
        Constitution and state constitutions, or the
        malfeasance of judges who have falsified the precedents
        in order to advance their personal anti-firearms
        agendas.
        
             [California, for example, has limited the ability
        of local governments to regulate firearms.  While the
        state has kept its broad regulatory power, cities and
        counties can only prohibit guns from being carried in
        public places.
        
             Q  How have the courts -- particularly the U.S.
        Supreme Court -- interpreted the Second Amendment?
        
             A  The Supreme Court has flatly held that the
        individual's right to keep and bear arms "is not a
        right granted by the Constitution."]
        
             The decision in which the Supreme Court "flatly
        held" this was \U.S. v Cruikshank\, referenced below.
        The Court meant that the right to keep and bear arms
        preceded the constitution, and therefore was not a
        right granted by the constitution, such as, for
        example, the right to vote.  The Court's reasoning was
        that only rights originating in the federal
        Constitution could be imposed on the states by federal
        courts.  That decision by the Reconstruction-era
        Supreme Court ignored the intent of the authors of the
        Fourteenth Amendment to apply the protections of the
        Bill of Rights -- including, explicitly, the Second
        Amendment -- to state courts.  If the \Cruikshank\
        decision were applied today, it would strike down
        almost \all\ federal intervention against state and
        local governments, because federal courts could not
        impose any of the Bill of Rights on state or local
        governments, or on private individuals.  States could
        then revert to segregated schools and restaurants,
        there could have been no federal trial of the Los
        Angeles police officers who beat Rodney King, and
        states could allow the Lord's Prayer in public schools.
        
             In the \Cruikshank\ case, blacks who had been
        disarmed and terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan were
        arguing that the KKK had violated their rights; the
        Court was ruling that the federal courts had no
        jurisdiction to prevent the Klansmen from doing so. Is
        this what the ACLU of Southern California would like to
        see happen today?
        
             Here are the Court's words:
        
           The third and eleventh counts are even more
           objectionable. They charge the intent to have been
           to deprive the citizens named, they being in
           Louisiana, "of their respective several lives and
           liberty of person without due process of law." This
           is nothing else than alleging a conspiracy to
           falsely imprison or murder citizens of the United
           States, being within the territorial jurisdiction of
           the State of Louisiana.
        
           The rights of life and personal liberty are natural
           rights of man. "To secure these rights," says the
           Declaration of Independence, "governments are
           instituted among men, deriving their just powers
           from the consent of the governed." The very highest
           duty of the States, when they entered into the Union
           under the Constitution, was to protect all persons
           within their boundaries in the enjoyment of these
           "unalienable rights with which they were endowed by
           their Creator."
        
           Sovereignty, for this purpose, rests alone with the
           States. It is no more the duty or within the power
           of the United States to punish for a conspiracy to
           falsely imprison or murder within a State, than it
           would be to punish for false imprisonment or murder
           itself.
        
             [In the four cases in which the high court has
        addressed the issue, it has consistently held that the
        Second Amendment does not confer a blanket right of
        individual gun ownership.]
        
             As I've demonstrated, in one of the four
        decisions, that is because the Court held the right
        existed previously and independently.
        
             [The most important Supreme Court Second Amendment
        case, \U.S. v. Miller\, was decided in 1939.  It
        involved two men who illegally shipped a sawed-off
        shotgun from Oklahoma to Arkansas, then claimed the
        Second Amendment prohibited the federal government from
        prosecuting them.
        
             The court emphatically disagreed, ruling that the
        Second Amendment has the "obvious intent" of creating
        state militias, not of authorizing individual gun
        ownership.  In two earlier rulings in 1876 and 1886,
        the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment
        affected only the federal government's power to
        regulate gun ownership and had no effect on state gun
        control powers.  Those cases, \Presser v. U.S.\ and
        \U.S. v Cruikshank\, formed the basis for the
        continuing legal decisions that the Second Amendment
        was not an impediment to rational gun control.]
        
             The \Presser\ case, if anything, destroys the
        "militia" premise the ACLU brochure is arguing; the
        Court was ruling against Presser that he and other
        members of a local self-organized militia didn't have
        the right to march armed \as a group\ on city streets
        without a permit from local government.  The question
        of whether the men had the right to carry arms \as
        individuals\ was never looked at.
        
             The \Miller\ case is odd in that the Supreme Court
        never heard arguments from the defense in overturning
        the lower-court ruling to dismiss charges on the basis
        of the defendants' Second-amendment rights; only a
        prosecution brief -- and one which suffered from the
        same lack of historical veracity as the ACLU
        brochure's.  Defendant Jack Miller had been murdered
        before the case reached the Supreme Court and the other
        defendant, Frank Layton, was in prison; no attorney
        argued their Second-amendment case to the Supreme
        Court.
        
             Here is the meat of what the Supreme Court
        actually said in \U.S. v Miller\:
        
            The Court can not take judicial notice that a
            shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long
            has today any reasonable relation to the
            preservation or efficiency of a well regulated
            militia; and therefore can not say that the Second
            Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to
            keep and bear such a weapon.
        
             The Supreme Court was stating that a weapon, to be
        protected by the Second Amendment, had to have a
        military application, specifically one that was useful
        to a citizen's militia.  Weapons used only by
        gangsters, such as brass knuckles, would not, in their
        view, be promoting the framers' intent of a well-armed
        citizenry.  In the absence of counsel for the
        defendants to provide evidence to the Court that a
        sawed-off shotgun had some military application --
        which would have been easy since shortbarreled shotguns
        were used in World War One -- the court could "not take
        judicial notice" that a sawed-off shotgun was a
        "militia" weapon, and reversed the lower court's ruling
        on that basis and that basis alone.
        
             In fact, by the Miller court's reasoning, full-
        auto M-16 assault rifles, full-auto AK-47's, and Uzis
        \would\ be useful to militia, and therefore their
        ownership by civilians would be protected by the Second
        Amendment.  Is this an argument that the ACLU of
        Southern California executives are ready to embrace?
        
             [In another case that the Supreme Court declined
        to review, a federal appeals court in Illinois ruled in
        1983 that the Second Amendment could not prevent a
        municipal government from banning handgun possession.
        In the case \Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove\, the
        appeals court held that contemporary handguns couldn't
        be considered as weapons relevant to a collective
        militia.]
        
             The Supreme Court simply denied certiorari on the
        \Morton Grove\ case, which gives it no precedential
        value outside of the federal district in which the case
        was resolved by the lower court.  If the Supreme Court
        had actually wished to endorse the lower court's
        decision, and endorse the ACLU of Southern California
        executives' view of the irrelevancy of the Second
        Amendment, the Supreme Court could simply have issued a
        summary affirmation of the lower court's decision.  It
        did not do so, leaving the question unresolved.
        Constitutional attorney Stephen Halbrook (mentioned
        earlier in Senator Hatch's preface) expressed to me
        privately in 1993 the thought that the Supreme Court
        had actually done Second-Amendment advocates a favor in
        denying cert on the \Morton Grove\ case, since Quilici
        was both plaintiff and his own attorney, and refused to
        accept research and advice offered by renowned
        constitutional attorneys.
        
             [Q  The National Rifle Association (NRA) says that
        the Second Amendment guarantees our right to keep and
        bear arms.  Has the NRA got it wrong?
        
             A  Like any powerful special interest, the NRA
        works to secure its financial well-being.  It insists
        on a view of the Second Amendment that defies virtually
        all court decisions and contradicts findings of most
        legal scholars.  In so doing, the NRA actively
        perpetuates a seemingly endless cycle of gun-related
        fatalities.]
        
             Trust an ideologue to answer a question with an ad
        hominem attack on the motives of those who disagree
        with them, not only suggesting that the 3.4 million
        members of the National Rifle Association are motivated
        by financial well-being in their view of the purpose of
        the Second Amendment, but also scapegoating the law-
        abiding and well-trained NRA gun owners for the actions
        of the criminally insane few.  This is a case of the
        pot calling the kettle black, since the ACLU of
        Southern California is financed by elite Hollywood
        jetsetters who undoubtedly feel firearms are a special
        privilege which they should enjoy as exclusively as
        their limousines and private spas, but also because the
        ACLU of Southern California is currently battling the
        public perception that its litigation on behalf of
        criminal defendants has created a judicial atmosphere
        in which no effective means remain for removing
        hardened criminals from society.
        
             [NRA intimidates politicians because it is very
        well financed and, like any wealthy single-issue
        special interest, can muster considerable pressure and
        tactics against legislators who oppose it.  For
        decades, the NRA has aggressively promulgated its
        message.]
        
             This is likely envy speaking, since the National
        Rifle Association has 3.4 million members, while the
        total national membership of ACLU is reported to be
        280,000.  Which civil liberties organization is more
        likely to effectively lobby its views?  One with almost
        3-1/2 million members, or one slightly over a quarter
        million?
        
             [Other voices have begun to be heard, however,
        including the public health community, civil rights and
        civil liberties organizations, and groups committed to
        women's, children's, and family rights.]
        
             These voices are being heard because they play
        into the prejudices of the dominant media culture in
        this country. Meanwhile, none of the three major
        television networks will even \sell\ commercial time to
        the NRA, while ostensibly news programs regularly air
        anti-gun propaganda as straight news.\
        
             [The NRA implies that the Bill of Rights forces us
        to accept unlimited gun ownership and tolerate the
        human tragedies that guns cause in our society.  That
        simply isn't true.]
        
             What isn't true is that unlimited gun ownership
        causes human tragedies.  Where gun ownership and
        carrying is the most legally restricted and entangled
        in bureaucratic impediments -- such as Washington D.C.
        -- the crime rates are the highest.  In places where
        gun ownership is free and easy -- such as New
        Hampshire, Vermont, and Arizona -- crime is
        substantially less.  Still, the cause-and-effect
        relationship between gun ownership and crime is mutual,
        since high crime causes more gun ownership by potential
        victims at least as much as the reverse.
        
             [Q  What are the Second Amendment positions of the
        American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Southern
        California?
        
             A  For decades, both the national ACLU and its
        Southern California affiliate have agreed that the
        Second Amendment guarantees only the rights of states
        to maintain militias.  The national ACLU has urged
        caution over gun control laws that, though well-
        intended, might infringe on other civil liberties.
        
             The ACLU of Southern California believes effective
        gun control -- especially of handguns and assault
        weapons -- is essential to curbing the escalating
        violence in our society.]
        
             This irrelevant, quasi-religious belief by the
        executives of the ACLU of Southern California not only
        has nothing whatsoever to do with the purposes of the
        American Civil Liberties Union as a civil liberties
        organization, but it is also unfounded and contrary to
        the latest scientific evidence.  The 1993 National Self
        Defense Survey conducted by professors Gary Kleck and
        Marc Gertz of the Department of Criminology and
        Criminal Justice at Florida State University found that
        there are 2.45 million genuine defensive civilian uses
        of firearms in a year, 1.9 million of them with
        handguns alone.  That is a defensive use of a firearm
        once every 13 seconds.
        
             [Q  The Second Amendment says "the right of the
        people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
        Doesn't it mean just that?
        
             A  There is more to the Second Amendment than just
        the last 14 words.
        
             Most of the debate on the Amendment has focused on
        its final phrase and entirely ignores its first phrase:
        "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
        Security of a free State ..." And to dissect the
        Amendment is to destroy its context.]
        
             Indeed.  And that is precisely what the executives
        of the ACLU of Southern California are attempting to
        do.  But if you wish a professional opinion on the
        textual meaning of the Second Amendment, there is one
        available.
        
             Roy Copperud was a newspaper writer on major
        dailies for over three decades before embarking on a
        distinguished seventeen-year career teaching journalism
        at USC.  Copperud spent most of four decades writing a
        column dealing with the professional aspects of
        journalism for \Editor and Publisher\, a weekly
        magazine focusing on the journalism field.
        
             He was on the usage panel of the \American
        Heritage Dictionary\, and \Merriam Webster's Usage
        Dictionary\ frequently cited him as an expert.
        Copperud's fifth book on usage, \American Usage and
        Style: The Consensus\, has been in continuous print
        from Van Nostrand Reinhold since 1981, and was the
        winner of the Association of American Publishers'
        Humanities Award.
        
             Here's what Roy Copperud had to say about the
        meaning of the Second Amendment when I interviewed him
        about it, shortly before his death in 1991:
        
             {Copperud:} The words "A well-regulated militia,
        being necessary to the security of a free state"
        constitute a present participle, rather than a clause.
        It is used as an adjective, modifying "militia," which
        is followed by the main clause of the sentence (subject
        "the right," verb "shall").  The right to keep and bear
        arms is asserted as essential for maintaining a
        militia.
        
             In reply to your numbered questions:
        
             {Schulman: (1) Can the sentence be interpreted to
        grant the right to keep and bear arms solely to "a
        well-regulated militia"?;}
        
             {Copperud:} (1) The sentence does not restrict the
        right to keep and bear arms, nor does it state or imply
        possession of the right elsewhere or by others than the
        people; it simply makes a positive statement with
        respect to a right of the people.
        
             {Schulman: (2) Is "the right of the people to keep
        and bear arms" granted by the words of the Second
        Amendment, or does the Second Amendment assume a
        preexisting right of the people to keep and bear arms,
        and merely state that such right "shall not be
        infringed"?;}
        
             {Copperud:} (2) The right is not granted by the
        amendment; its existence is assumed.  The thrust of the
        sentence is that the right shall be preserved inviolate
        for the sake of ensuring a militia.
        
             {Schulman: (3) Is the right of the people to keep
        and bear arms conditioned upon whether or not a well-
        regulated militia is, in fact, necessary to the
        security of a free State, and if that condition is not
        existing, is the statement "the right of the people to
        keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" null and
        void?;}
        
             {Copperud:} (3) No such condition is expressed or
        implied. The right to keep and bear arms is not said by
        the amendment to depend on the existence of a militia.
        No condition is stated or implied as to the relation of
        the right to keep and bear arms and to the necessity of
        a well-regulated militia as requisite to the security
        of a free state.  The right to keep and bear arms is
        deemed unconditional by the entire sentence.
        
             {Schulman: (4) Does the clause "A well-regulated
        Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
        State," grant a right to the government to place
        conditions on the "right of the people to keep and bear
        arms," or is such right deemed unconditional by the
        meaning of the entire sentence?;}
        
             {Copperud:} (4) The right is assumed to exist and
        to be unconditional, as previously stated.  It is
        invoked here specifically for the sake of the militia.
        
             {Schulman: (5) Which of the following does the
        phrase "well-regulated militia" mean: "well-equipped,"
        "well-organized," "well-drilled," "well-educated," or
        "subject to regulations of a superior authority"?}
        
             {Copperud:} (5) The phrase means "subject to
        regulations of a superior authority"; this accords with
        the desire of the writers for civilian control over the
        military.
        
             {Schulman: If at all possible, I would ask you to
        take into account the changed meanings of words, or
        usage, since that sentence was written two-hundred
        years ago, but not to take into account historical
        interpretations of the intents of the authors, unless
        those issues can be clearly separated.}
        
             {Copperud:} To the best of my knowledge, there has
        been no change in the meaning of words or in usage that
        would affect the meaning of the amendment.  If it were
        written today, it might be put: "Since a well-regulated
        militia is necessary to the security of a free state,
        the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not
        be abridged."
        
             {Schulman: As a "scientific control" on this
        analysis, I would also appreciate it if you could
        compare your analysis of the text of the Second
        Amendment to the following sentence,
        
             "A well-schooled electorate, being necessary to
        the security of a free State, the right of the people
        to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed."
        
             My questions for the usage analysis of this
        sentence would be,
        
             (1) Is the grammatical structure and usage of this
        sentence, and the way the words modify each other,
        identical to the Second Amendment's sentence?; and
        
             (2) Could this sentence be interpreted to restrict
        "the right of the people to keep and read Books" only
        to "a well-educated electorate" -- for example,
        registered voters with a high-school diploma?}
        
             {Copperud:} (1) Your "scientific control" sentence
        precisely parallels the amendment in grammatical
        structure.
        
             (2) There is nothing in your sentence that either
        indicates or implies the possibility of a restricted
        interpretation.
        
             [While some scholars have suggested that the
        Amendment gives individuals the constitutional right to
        bear arms, still others have argued for discarding the
        Amendment as irrelevant and out of date.]
        
             Yes, and there is popular sentiment for repealing
        \all\ of the Bill of Rights.  Do the executives of the
        ACLU of Southern California wish to make the existence
        of all rights inferior to transient public opinion?
        
             [However, the vast majority of constitutional
        experts agree that the right to keep and bear arms was
        intended to apply only to members of state-run, citizen
        militias.]
        
             Yes?  Precisely what experts are those?  Certainly
        not those consulted by the United States Senate, when
        it issued its report on the question.
        
             [Q  If it doesn't guarantee the right to own a
        gun, why was the Second Amendment included in the Bill
        of Rights?
        
             A  When James Madison (pictured below Thomas
        Jefferson on the cover) proposed the Bill of Rights in
        the late 1780's, people were still suspicious of any
        centralized federal government. Just 10 years earlier,
        the British army been an occupying force in Colonial
        America -- enforcing arbitrary laws decreed from afar.
        After the Revolutionary War, the states insisted on the
        constitutional right to defend themselves in case the
        fledgling U.S. government became tyrannical like the
        British Crown. The states demanded the right to keep an
        armed "militia" as a form of insurance.]
        
             The executives of the ACLU of Southern California
        are guilty of something akin to blasphemy, by invoking
        Jefferson and Madison in support of their Orwellian
        reversal of history.  In effect, we are hearing the
        sort of argument a spokesman for the Crown might have
        made to the American colonists that all's well with the
        world and there's no reason to keep firearms to prevent
        abuse of government power.  The authoritarians of the
        ACLU of California masquerade as identifying with the
        now safely-entombed leaders of the American Revolution,
        but they are in fact counterrevolutionary Tories, who
        wish to restore this continent to European statism.
        
             I've already quoted Madison about the value of
        civilian arms; here are a few choice quotes from Thomas
        Jefferson on the value of firearms:
        
             "A strong body makes the mind strong.  As to the
        species of exercises, I advise the gun.  While this
        gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness,
        enterprise and independence to the mind.  Games played
        with the ball and others of that nature, are too
        violent for the body and stamp no character on the
        mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion
        of your walk."
             - Thomas Jefferson, \Encyclopedia of T. Jefferson\,
               318  (Foley, Ed., reissued 1967)
        
             "What country before ever existed a century and a
        half without a rebellion? ... The tree of liberty must
        be refreshed from time to time with the blood of
        patriots and tyrants.  It is its natural manure."
                     -- Thomas Jefferson,
                        Letter to William Stevens Smith,
                        November 13, 1787.
        
             "What country can preserve its liberties if their
        rulers are not warned from time to time that their
        people preserve the spirit of resistance?  Let them
        take arms."
        
                 -- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison,
                    Dec. 20, 1787, quoted from
                    "Papers of Jefferson" edited by Boyd et al.
        
             And, most importantly, Jefferson writing in the
        Declaration of Independence:
        
             "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
        men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
        Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
        these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
        That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
        among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent
        of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of
        Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
        Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
        institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
        principles and organizing its powers in such form, as
        to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety
        and Happiness."
        
             Does it seem at all likely that Thomas Jefferson
        would have endorsed the notion that civilians are to be
        armed only after obtaining permission from government
        officials?
        
        {Illustration.  Caption: "A 1770 Paul Revere etching
        depicts British soldiers firing on a Boston Crowd."
        What chutzpah.}
        
             [Q  What exactly is a "well regulated militia?"
        
             A  Militias in 1792 consisted of part-time
        citizen-soldiers organized by individual states.  Its
        members were civilians who kept arms, ammunition and
        other military equipment in their houses and barns --
        there was no other way to muster a militia with
        sufficient speed.
        
             Over time, however, the state militias failed to
        develop as originally anticipated.  States found it
        difficult to organize and finance their militias, and,
        by the mid-1800's, they had effectively ceased to
        exist.  Beginning in 1903, Congress began to pass
        legislation that would eventually transform state
        militias into what is now the National Guard.
        
             Today, the National Guard -- and Army Reserve --
        are scarcely recognizable as descendants of militias in
        the 1790's. The National Guard and Reserve forces, in
        fact, do not permit personnel to store military weapons
        at home.  And many of today's weapons -- tanks, armored
        personnel carriers, airplanes, and the like -- hardly
        lend themselves to use by individuals.]
        
             As Senator Hatch pointed out, the current National
        Guards are not "descendants" of the militia at all;
        they were \not\ organized under the militia clause of
        the constitution but under Congress's power to raise an
        army.  The Supreme Court decision in \Perpich v.
        Department of Defense\ -- in which Governor Rudy
        Perpich of Minnesota was seeking to prevent use of the
        Minnesota National Guard troops outside of U.S.
        territory -- established that as a legal issue.
        
             Today, soldiers in the National Guards are dual-
        enlisted in their State Guards, subject to the military
        authority of the various state governors, and as
        reservists in the Armed Forces of the United States,
        subject to call up for active duty.  They can be sent
        to train or even engage in overseas combat.
        
             On the other hand, current United States law still
        defines most male adults in this country as members of
        the reserve militia.
        
             Finally, the executives of the ACLU of Southern
        California's call for abandoning the Second Amendment
        is a prelude toward general restrictions on popular
        arms, the sort that might be used against ambitious
        politicians who seek to impose their elite policies on
        a recalcitrant public against our will.  Considering
        how little popular support there is for many of the
        extremist positions taken by ultraliberal supporters of
        the ACLU of Southern California, it is not difficult to
        see that a well-armed and likely uncooperative
        citizenry is an impediment to utopian social
        engineering which requires docile submission by the
        public to government officials.
        
             The national office of the ACLU is at least aware
        that armed police power in this country is dangerous to
        liberty: they have joined with the NRA and the Second
        Amendment Foundation in calling for a commission to
        investigate abuse of power by authorities in cases such
        as:
        
             * The raid on the home of California millionaire
        Donald Scott, whose Malibu home was invaded -- and
        Scott killed while sleepily trying to defend himself
        from what he thought was burglars -- on a trumped up
        warrant alleging illegal drugs in an attempt to
        confiscate his estate under asset forfeiture laws;
        
             *The entrapment of backwoodsman Randy Weaver of
        Ruby Ridge, Idaho by federal Alcohol, Tobacco, and
        Firearms agents attempting to blackmail him into spy
        for them on fellow white supremicists; they tricked him
        into sawing off a shotgun past the legal limit. His
        continued refusal led to an FBI sniper murdering his
        wife (while she held their infant child) and Weaver's
        older son. Weaver was tried and acquitted for shooting
        back in spite of attempts (established by civil-
        liberties attorney Gerry Spence in Weaver's trial) by
        federal officials to falsify evidence.  No charges have
        yet been filed against any federal officials;
        
             *The invasion and opening of initial gunfire on
        the law-abiding Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas by ATF
        agents attempting to draw attention away from a sexual
        harassment scandal at the agency, and the subsequent
        burning down of the Branch Davidian complex by FBI-
        driven tanks collapsing the structure and causing
        combustion; 81 men, women, and children died in that
        fire.
        
             With government out of control, is this the time
        for a civil liberties organization to disempower the
        civilian population by disarming them?
        
                                  ***
        
                                [Guns in America:
                                 The Statistics:
        
        
             *  Firearms were used to kill more than 60,000
        people in the last two years.  Handguns kill 22,000 per
        year, 60 each day, including 12 children.]
        
             And, according to the National Self Defense
        Survey, firearms \saved\ five million people from
        criminals in those same two years. That's 6,849 lives
        defended by privately owned firearms per day.
        
             [*  U.S. civilians own 211 million guns, including
        66.7 million handguns.
        
             *  A new handgun is produced every 20 seconds and
        is used to shoot someone every two minutes.]
        
             Yes, and a handgun prevents a criminal attack
        every 16 seconds.
        
             [*  Every day, handguns are used in 33 rapes, 575
        robberies, and 1,116 assaults.]
        
             According to data from the National Self Defense
        Survey, of the 1.9 million handgun defenses in one
        year, about 8 percent of the defensive uses involved a
        sexual crime such as an attempted sexual assault -- 416
        handgun defenses per day, or a dozen handgun defenses
        for each time a handgun is used by a rapist. Twenty-two
        percent involved robbery -- 1145 handgun defenses per
        day, or twice as many handgun defenses for each time a
        handgun is used in a robbery.  About 29 percent
        involved some sort of assault other than sexual assault
        --- 1510 per day, or one-and-a-half times as often as
        handguns are used in non-sexual assaults. It seems the
        executives of the ACLU of Southern California, if they
        got their way and succeeded in further restricting
        handgun availability to the general public, would be
        making it easier for rapists than the perpetrators of
        any other crime.
        
             [*  In late 1993, a Time Magazine/CNN poll found
        that 92% of Americans supported the recently passed
        Brady Bill, which requires a five-day waiting period to
        buy a handgun.]
        
             And reverts to an NRA-backed instant background
        check after five years.
        
             [*  The same poll found that 60% favor even
        stronger gun-control laws.]
        
             Which is meaningless, since most people polled
        have no idea what the \current\ gun control laws are.
        If you were to poll most Californians (especially those
        who don't own a firearm) whether they favor imposing
        the Brady Law's five-day waiting period on California,
        you'd probably get an overwhelming "yes" -- from people
        who aren't even aware that there has been a fifteen-day
        waiting period in California for years.
        
             [*  More than 600,000 guns are sold each year in
        California alone.]
        
             Obviously being purchased by people who think they
        have the right to keep and bear firearms.  Or should
        only the opinions of elitist executives of the ACLU of
        Southern California carry political weight?
        
             [*  A Seattle-based study concluded that for each
        example of a gun used in self-defense to kill an
        intruder, there were 43.9 other gun fatalities.  That
        includes 2.3 incidents of accidental gun deaths, 4.6
        criminal homicides, and 37 suicides.]
        
             If one compares the National Self Defense Survey's
        estimated 1,728,000 gun defenses in or around a home in
        one year with a conservatively high estimate of gun-
        related homicides and fatal gun accidents in the home
        in a year -- at most about 8,000 -- one can compute
        that a gun kept in the home for protection is about 216
        times as likely to be used in a defense against a
        criminal than it is to cause the death of an innocent
        victim in that household.
        
             [*  In 1989, 178 justifiable homicides were
        reported nationwide, but 1600 accidental killings
        involving guns.]
        
             In fact, the number of justifiable homicides in a
        year are, according to Gary Kleck, closer to 2,800,
        since FBI crime reports used by statisticians exclude
        any justifiable or excusable homicide which isn't
        labelled that in the initial police report. But even
        this is likely also an underestimate, since police are
        reluctant to classify any homicide as "justifiable,"
        preferring to classify them as either unsolved or
        accidental.
        
             As far as firearms accidents are concerned, they
        are down 40% from ten years ago, and down 80% from 50
        years ago.
        
             [*  Shooting is the leading cause of death among
        African-American males ages 15 to 24.]
        
             No one questions that African-Americans are the
        worst victims of crime of all kinds -- and even the
        Reverends Jesse Jackson or Louis Farrakhan could not
        deny that these crimes are being done by young black
        males.  But is this surprising in a culture whose
        family structure was destroyed by utopian government
        programs which created a generation of fatherless boys
        and inner-city government schools that taught a
        philosophy of dependency on big government rather than
        self-reliance?  Who is historically more responsible
        for this state of affairs: the more-conservative NRA or
        the more-liberal ACLU?
        
             [*  The Los Angeles County Sheriff's department
        recovers 30,000 guns a year during routine criminal
        investigations of which 6,000 have been legally
        purchased then stolen.]
        
             Are we also going to blame automobile owners when
        their cars are stolen or carjacked for use in a
        robbery?  Talk about blaming the innocent for the
        actions of the guilty!
        
             [*  Gunshot wounds to children nearly doubled
        between 1987 and 1990.  Firearm murders of young people
        age 19 and under went up 125% between 1984 and 1990.]
        
             This is an odd definition of "children," which
        includes 18 and 19 year-old individuals who can serve
        in the military and on police forces.  We must also
        seriously doubt whether it is firearms that are at
        fault in the deaths of children who are recruited into
        criminal gangs even before puberty.
        
             [*  Every six hours, a teenager or preteen commits
        suicide with a gun.]
        
             And almost all studies of suicide show no
        correlation between the availability of any particular
        means of suicide and the suicide rate.  Japan has few
        guns, yet has twice the U.S. suicide rate. \The
        American Journal of Psychiatry\ from March, 1990
        reported in a study by Rich, Young, Fowler, Wagner, and
        Black that all gun-suicides which were statistically
        reduced in the five years following Canada's handgun
        restrictions beginning 1976 were substituted 100% by
        suicides using other methods, mostly jumping off
        bridges.  Therefore, eliminating firearms does not
        eliminate suicide: it merely shifts the suicide to
        other causes, and no rational public policy can
        conclude that the availability of firearms is a
        causative factor.
        
             [*  An estimated 1.2 million elementary school-age
        latchkey children have access to guns when they are
        home alone.]
        
             Parents who leave their children home alone are
        morally and legally responsible for what ill befalls
        their children, whether it is from firearms, or from
        poison under the sink, or from a box of matches.
        
             [*  Most Los Angeles high school students say they
        could buy a gun on the street in an hour or less if
        they needed it.]
        
             Perhaps they need it.  School authorities and
        police seem singularly unable to protect them from the
        well-armed gangsters among them.
        
             [*  When firearm suicide and homicide rates in Los
        Angeles County are combined, the total rate is higher
        than that for motor vehicle crashes.]
        
             And when the suicide and homicide rate in Japan is
        compared to the United States, it is higher than the
        combined U.S. rate. Yet Japan has few guns.
        
        {ILLUSTRATION of a shadowy figure holding a handgun
        menacingly. Are the executives of the ACLU of Southern
        California trying to sell civil liberties, or \Argosy
        Magazine\?}
        
             [*  At least four federal safety standards
        regulate the manufacture of teddy bears.  No federal
        safety standards apply to the manufacture of guns.]
        
             Are they seriously suggesting that guns are
        inadequately designed to perform their function
        effectively -- which is to fire energy-laden bullets at
        those who attack the innocent? Firearms are dangerous
        by necessity.  The object is to make them dangerous
        only to those who need to be, and deserve to be,
        stopped by them.  That is the purpose of firearms
        safety training -- which the NRA was doing fifty years
        before the ACLU was even formed.  I am constantly
        amazed that people who are afraid to be in the same
        room with a gun think they know how to tell firearms
        designers, instructors, and experienced shooters how to
        make guns safe.  The elitist arrogance of those who
        would run our country seems to be unlimited.
        
             [*  In 1993, handguns were used to kill 82 people
        in Japan, 76 people in Canada, 33 people in great
        Britain, and 40,000 people in the United States.]
        
        {End of ACLU materials}
        
             Yet, we observe that in the absence of firearms,
        the Japanese still manage to die at their own hands as
        often as Americans.  As do the Scots and the Northern
        Irish, according to data from Interpol, which show
        national homicide rates for these British countries
        greater than that of the United States.  As for Canada,
        its homicide rate compares to that of demographically
        similar areas of the United States.
        
             The last paragraph from the ACLU brochure is,
        incidentally, plagiarized from the literature of
        Handgun Control, Inc.  Are liberal pocketbooks getting
        so tight that the ACLU of Southern California must
        compete for contributions against Sarah Brady? --J.Neil
        Schulman
        
              SOURCES AND RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL READING:
        
        \The Right to Keep and Bear Arms:
        Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the
        Committee on the Judiciary\,
        United States Senate,
        Ninety-Seventh Congress
        Superintendent of Documents,
        U.S. Government Printing Office
        
        \That Every Man Be Armed:
        The Evolution of a Constitutional Right\
        by Stephen B. Halbrook
        University of New Mexico Press, 1984
        
        \Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out\
        Edited by Don B. Kates, Jr.
        Forward by Senator Frank Church
        North River Press, 1979
        
        \Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America\
        by Gary Kleck
        Aldine de Gruyter, 1991
        
        \The Samurai, The Mountie and The Cowboy: Should America
        Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies?\
        by David B. Kopel
        Prometheus Books, 1992
        
        \Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns\
        by J. Neil Schulman
        (Forthcoming: Synapse/Centurion Books, 1994)
        
        
                            WHAT CAN WE DO?
                          by J. Neil Schulman
        
             The first thing that needs to be said for the
        record is that the ACLU of Southern California
        executives have composed falsehoods and distortions
        that are worthy of Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph
        Goebbels -- and with the identical result of leaving
        the people defenseless against lethal statist
        powermongering.
        
             This is one of the most dangerous attacks on the
        Second Amendment ever made, because in the minds of
        many Americans, the ACLU defines the defense of civil
        liberties and the Bill of Rights.  To allow an ACLU
        affiliate  -- which files friend-of-the-court briefs on
        many crucial court cases -- to take a position that
        distorts the history and court rulings of the Second
        Amendment is completely unacceptable, and must be
        stopped fully and effectively.
        
             If you are interested in the formation of an
        Unabridged Bill of Rights Caucus of the ACLU of
        Southern California, made up of current and future ACLU
        members who believe the right to keep and bear arms is
        a vital and inseparable individual right guaranteed not
        only by the Second Amendment but by constitutional
        clauses and legislation in most of the 50 state
        constitutions and/or statutes, please write me at one
        of the addresses provided below.
        
             If you are not already a member of the ACLU of
        Southern California, please join immediately, then get
        in touch.
        
             Information on joining the ACLU of Southern
        California may be obtained from the ACLU of Southern
        California by phone at 213-977-9500, or by writing them
        at 1616 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026.  Dues can
        be as little as $5 per year.
        
        
                         ABOUT J. NEIL SCHULMAN
        
        J. NEIL SCHULMAN is the author of two novels, short
        fiction, nonfiction, and screenwritings, as well as
        having been the founder of SoftServ Publishing, the
        first publishing company to distribute "paperless
        books" via personal computers and modems. He now
        distributes all his own writings, much of it never
        before published, in computer hypertext, on disk and
        via modem, and he's lectured on electronic publishing
        for the New School for Social Research in New York (via
        Connected Education's computer conference program) and
        Northwood University in Midland, Michigan.  He's
        currently at work on a third novel, ESCAPE FROM HEAVEN,
        and in Spring, 1994 his book \STOPPING POWER: Why 70
        Million Americans Own Guns\ will be published by
        Synapse/Centurion Books.
        
             \The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction\'s article
        about Schulman calls his books, "very influential in
        the LIBERTARIAN-SF movement" and says his books "are
        motivated by a combination of moral outrage and a
        fascination with the hardware of politics and
        economics."
        
             During 1992, he hosted \The J. Neil Schulman
        Show\, a program of interviews and music, on the
        American Radio Network's Kaleidascope program, and has
        been writing frequent articles for the \Los Angeles
        Times\ and \Orange County Register\ opinion pages which
        have been reprinted in numerous major daily newspapers
        across the country.
        
             Schulman's first novel, \Alongside Night\ (Crown
        hardcover 1979, Ace paperback 1982, Avon paperback
        1987, SoftServ 1990, JNS, 1993), a prophetic story of
        an America beset by inflation and revolution, was
        endorsed by Anthony Burgess and Nobel laureate Milton
        Friedman, and received widely positive reviews,
        including the \Los Angeles Times\ and \Publisher's
        Weekly\.  The novel, published in 1979, anticipated
        such 1980's and 1990's problems as increased gang
        violence and homelessness, economic chaos such as the
        1980's stock market crash and S&L crisis, and political
        trends such as the economic and political unification
        of Europe.  In 1989, \Alongside Night\ was entered into
        the "Prometheus Hall of Fame" for classic works of
        fiction promoting liberty.
        
             \The Rainbow Cadenza\ (Simon & Schuster hardcover
        1983, New English library paperback 1984, Avon
        paperback 1986, SoftServ 1989, JNS, 1993) was his
        second novel, winning the 1984 Prometheus Award, and
        was the basis for an all-classical-music LASERIUM
        concert which played for several years in Los Angeles,
        San Francisco, and Boston.  It's the story of a young
        girl in the 22nd Century who must fight the sexual
        exploitation of her era to pursue a career as a
        performer of "lasegraphy," a classical form of visual
        music evolved from the current laser shows.  The book
        received favorable comments from such diverse authors
        as psychologist/bestseller Nathaniel Branden, British
        author Colin Wilson, and the late Robert A. Heinlein.
        
             Schulman also wrote the "Profile in Silver"
        episode, exploring the JFK assassination, for \The
        Twilight Zone\ TV series on CBS, which was run three
        times in network prime time in 1986 and 1987, and which
        can now be seen in syndication.
        
             In addition to his opinion pieces for the \LA
        Times\ and \Orange County Register\ opinion pages, some
        of which have been syndicated in major newspapers
        nationwide, Schulman's writings have appeared in
        magazines and newspapers including \Reader's Digest\,
        the \Los Angeles Times Book Review\, \Reason\ Magazine,
        \Liberty\, \Gun Week\, \The Lamp-Post\, and \The
        Journal of Social and Biological Structures\, and he's
        delivered talks at World Science Fiction conventions
        and other conferences.  Mr. Schulman has been written
        about in magazines and newspapers including the \Wall
        Street Journal\, \USA Today\, \Shooting Times\,
        \Analog\, and \Byte\ Magazine, and has been interviewed
        on CNN, ABC's \World News Tonight\, and numerous radio
        talk shows coast to coast on subjects ranging from his
        novels and screenwriting, to electronic publishing, to
        firearms issues.
        
            Reply to:
         J. Neil Schulman
         Mail:           P.O. Box 94, Long Beach, CA 90801-0094
         JNS BBS:        1-310-839-7653,,,,25
         Internet:       softserv@genie.geis.com
        
        
         Post as: ACLULIES.TXT
        
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