Plenty of people are going to sound in on the Minnesota reservation school massacre. New shrill demands for more "gun control" will certainly feature prominently on editorial pages and broadcasts across the land, and some might even grudgingly acknowledge that it looks like the weapons were taken from a cop.
I've pretty much written all I have to say on this and any other school shootings here.
I recall a 1994 SCOTUS decision, U.S. v Lopez, where a 9-0 ruling said "unconstitutional" to the guaranteed victim zones. What happened?
ReplyDeleteDavid, it didn't take long for the gun ban crew to take a tragedy and turn it to their political advantage. Brady released the "See what happens when we don't ban assault weapons / 50 cal / cop killer bullets and allow law abiding citizens to retain a bit of their privacy by getting rid of gun purchase records" tapdance mere hours after the story broke.
ReplyDeletePathetic!
Carl—what happened was the Kohl amendment. From NRA-ILA:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nraila.org/Issues/factsheets/read.aspx?ID=62
"The Gun-Free School Zones Act was initially part of the Crime Control Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-647) that took effect on Jan. 29, 1991. On April 26, 1995, the Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional. In U.S. v. Lopez, the Court stated that Congress had overstepped its constitutional powers to regulate interstate commerce when it passed the law banning gun possession within 1,000 ft. of a school. The decision turned on whether Congress had the power to pass the law under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which specifically grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce.
"In September 1996, Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) offered as an amendment to the Treasury, Postal Appropriations bill a slightly modified version of the original Gun-Free School Zones Act. It passed and was included in the Omnibus Appropriations bill for fiscal year 1997. In an attempt to satisfy the Court`s concerns, the amendment specified that the law would apply to a firearm that has "moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce." Virtually all firearms have crossed state lines and would potentially be covered by the new language."