Firearm Rights

I intentionally named this section firearm rights rather than gun control.

Why?

A right, especially an inherent right that is explicitly protected from government control under the Constitution, can not be infringed based on popular opinion and gun control is simply another name for an agenda that aims to undermine the right.

You may think "what an absolutist position!" and you'd be right. I will not chip away such an important right to appease those who have an irrational fear of an inanimate object.

Further, this image explains exactly why I am an absolutist when it comes to the right to self defense.

As I've mentioned elsewhere on this site, my mother survived the Holocaust. When she was seven years old, Nazis broke down the door of her family's apartment in Prague, dragged the family out into the street, executed several neighbors in front of my mother and then tortured her and her parents before throwing my mother and grandmother in a concentration camp.

While my mother and her mother survived, thanks to the actions of the United States, most of her family was slaughtered in the concentration camps. After disarming my family, Nazis went as far as destroying all evidence of their existence and replacing basic items, such as a birth certificate, with their own branded documents. In the picture above, you'll see that my mother's sole surviving identification document was imprinted with a swastika, something that caused her intense grief until the day she died.

As has been well-documented many times over, one of the first things the Nazis did to pacify the Jewish population they intended to exterminate was disarm them. In fact, the first thing the Nazis did when abducting my mother was to search the apartment for firearms.

Yes, there is a problem in the United States with violence. The answer, however, is not to engage in a blanket denial of rights. Imagine if someone proposed curtailing First Amendment rights as a solution to the violence issue, pointing out that so many incidents of "gun violence" (a term I am putting in quotes since it is a political term meant to illogically imply that guns are capable of violence) are preceded by communication and gatherings of some sort. Further, one could argue, convincingly, that gang activity, rather than guns, is the root of "gun violence", as expert testimony before Congress has documented.

If we truly wanted to reduce "gun violence" in this country, we'd ban gangs, communications among gang members and all rights of association for gang members. You may say "why would we infringe First Amendment rights of people simply because they may be in a gang"? The same can be said about gun ownership, especially for semi-automatic weapons with detachable magazines. 99.9% of all such weapons are never used in criminal activity, yet many politicians want to ban them outright.

The point is that as a matter of precedent and our system of rights, it is never acceptable to engage in bans of fundamental rights simply because a tiny minority of individuals abuse the right.

Further, as my mother's experience shows, when the government disarms the people, government tends to become more tyrannical.

Whether it is outright bans or indirect bans through regulation (e.g., limitations on magazines, onerous fees or insurance requirements, waiting periods on or registration of components or ammunition, or regulation based on cosmetic elements), I simply will not support any legislation that infringes the most important right protected by our federal and state Constitutions.

This doesn't mean I reject any form of regulation of guns. The Supreme Court's ruling in the Bruen case is the model I follow in this regard and my scholarly writings on the topic (here, here and here) explain my position in full.