From: lvc@cbvox1.att.com
Newsgroups: info.firearms.politics
Subject: J. Neil Schulman Refutes ACLU Lies 1/2
Date: 21 Feb 94 13:11:24 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
 

                   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


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