Seven
years ago, Mike Bloomberg co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which grew
from 15 to 1,000 mayors in 46 states, including Republicans, Democrats, and
Independents around the country.
When
he completes a dozen admirable years of managing the nation’s largest unruly
city, Bloomberg at 71, the seventh richest American, can cap his business and
political career by not only pursuing that political and public-relations fight
against deadly weapons but opening a second front against gun madness by
funding and fronting an effort to reverse perversion of the Second Amendment by
George W. Bush’s Supreme Court.
In
the face of NRA insanity, Congress and the public forget it was only five years
ago in 2008 that Antonin Scalia’s deciding vote turned the Second Amendment on
its head, ending almost a century of legal interpretation that the “right to
bear arms” was not meant for individuals.
Since
then, no one has challenged that radical revision of the Constitution. Even
Barack Obama, in feeble and futile efforts to limit rampant gun ownership, has
accepted that view.
Why
should a bleeding nation wait for more changes in the Court to keep challenging
that decision and the helplessness it has produced to stem the damage?
Even
in 2008, Scalia himself showed some restraint: “Nothing in our opinion should
be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of
firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of
firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws
imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
Bloomberg
is no lawyer but, with the means and determination to make a real change, he can
fund a constant stream of cases aimed at forcing the Court to rethink and
either reaffirm or revise that five-year old catastrophe.
This
is one overriding issue on which not to “kill all the lawyers” but use them to
stop all the killing.
3 comments:
Doesn't make any sense to call something radical when a majority of the country agrees with the perspective.
Namely, there is nothing radical about saying that the right to bear arms is an individual one - especially given that it's in the Bill of Rights, a document that protects individuals from government overstep.
You are just upset that the vast majority of Americans view antigun ideology as the lunatic fringe.
People keep blaming the NRA and the "gun lobby." Such people don't realize that the majority of Americans support an individual's right to bear arms. Who do you think funds the NRA, the multi-national billion dollar fortune 100 gun corporations? Oh wait...there is no such thing. Most gun manufacturers are struggling to make a profit. The NRA and other "gun lobby" groups are one of the only, if not the only, lobbies funded by the American people. Get with the times, you radical lunatic.
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