The NRA as Disingenuous Fraudmeisters?

I skim the Washington Post online daily to see what’s going on in my old stomping grounds. I lived something like 30 to 60 miles from the White House from 1969 until 2003.

There is a lot of hoopla lately in Virginia about gun nuts who carry their handguns openly, which has been legal for a long time, but is becoming more common lately and is a bit in your face in Starbucks or the Golden Arches. Open carry makes the ordinary citizens uncomfortable and reasonably so. Most men stopped carrying their guns when they were eight years old - and those were loaded with caps. Anyway, there was a lengthy article on Sunday, November 14th starring a chap named Richard Van Cleave. Mr. Van Cleave is proud of his handguns and matches them to his outfits. He is proud about how the establishment is cowed by the gun “rights” movement. Each time I read about a deluded gun enthusiast like our Dickie, I have to shake my head at how he and his ilk have been brain washed by the NRA. They have all bought into the NRA’s baloney that they have a “Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”

"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." That’s the Second Amendment. Back when it was written, the states actually had militias. Not only that, the militias were regulated, in that they were required to train, supply their own weapon, and whatnot. It was not just the general populace hanging around with guns on their hips repelling godless liberals. Now we’ve got the National Guard - well, sort of, since most of those poor folks are getting their butts shot at in Iraq. Their weapons and equipment are supplied by the government, but they are still not the populace at large, and they do a considerable amount of training. A bunch to begin with, then a weekend each month and two or three weeks each summer. These are not good old boys with guns and pickup trucks. In no way can any group who describes themselves as a "militia" today actually be construed as what the founding fathers had in mind.

A little history: In the early 1980s, the Supreme Court addressed the Second Amendment issue after the town of Morton Grove, Illinois, passed an ordinance banning handguns (making certain reasonable exceptions for law enforcement, the military, and collectors). 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 Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger referred to the Second Amendment as "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 they, 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 - and I am a gun man.” Burger also wrote, "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...Surely 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..."

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.

On March 30, 1999, U.S. District Judge for Northern Texas (of course !) Sam R. Cummings restored a domestic abuser's firearms, citing the Second Amendment as guaranteeing an individual right to keep and bear arms. This decision flies in the face of years of precedence and jurisprudence and can only be viewed as a renegade decision. In his opinion, Judge Cummings was unable to follow usual judicial practice and cite legal precedents that undergird his decision because there are none. This ruling has been appealed and since that decision, two federal courts, including a higher Circuit court, have ruled that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms (Gillespie v. City of Indianapolis). [This paragraph and the previous three were lifted intact from the Brady Campaign website at: http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/issues/?page=second.]

Lest you think that I’m some sort of anti-gun wacko, I’m not; I own handguns, rifles, and shotguns. I was a very active trapshooter before I moved down here to Eastern Carolina where they don’t shoot much trap. I once had a concealed carry permit in Virginia. I don’t, however, think much of the NRA. But I digress

So then, we know that the NRA trumpets only half of the Second Amendment. Much more importantly, the NRA clearly doesn’t believe its own propaganda. The NRA was a party in the Quillici v. Morton Grove case, which lost in federal court and lost on appeal, and was denied certiorari by the Supremes - essentially another loss.

The District of Columbia also has a law that prohibits its citizens from owning handguns; presumably by the NRA’s standards, this law is also unconstitutional. In the 25-plus years that law has been on the books, the NRA appears to have never challenged that outrageous affront to the Second Amendment in court. I believe the NRA has also not challenged the City of New York’s anti-handgun law. With this lack of court action, the informed observer would have to conclude that after the Morton Grove losses, the NRA has learned its lesson.

How then do they continue to wield the political power that they wield? This organization petrifies the politicians. All it takes is the NRA telling its base that so-and-so wants to “take away your guns” and you’re a goner. Yet the power appears to be based on a right that the NRA claims is in the Constitution, but each time a clear violation of the claimed “right” occurs, the NRA dodges or hides or sues on some other grounds.

I was a member of the NRA back in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. No longer. I believe that NRA is misleading its members and collecting millions of dollars in dues while they are promoting a nonexistent “right.” Can Mr. Van Cleave really be championing a cause that is actually a fraud?