Original Message Date: 12 Jun 92 18:51:21
From: Uucp on 1:125/555
To: Tom Jennings on 1:125/111
Subj: Re: Serious attempt to repeal part of the Bill of Rights
^AINTL 1:125/111 1:125/555
From kumr!eff.org!van
From: van@eff.org (Gerard Van der Leun)
To: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu, gnu@toad.com
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1992 12:40:53 -0400
Cc: jwarren@autodesk.com, tom@toad.com, junk@cygnus.com, Ť
eff-board@eff.org,
I asked Shari Steele in our Washington office to look into the
message concerning the repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Here is her
reply and pertinent document.
-- Gerard/ EFF/Cambridge
========================================
Well, guys, it's true. Major Owens, Representative from New York,
did introduce a resolution to repeal the 2nd Amendment on March 11.
I am attaching the transcript from the Congressional Record.
However, it should be noted that Rep. Owens himself said,
"[Repealing the 2nd Amendment] is not my goal. My goal is to raise
the level of debate, accelerate the level of debate and discussion
about and the need to control the sale, manufacture, and
distribution of guns in our society."
Let me know if I can be of any more help!
Shari, Attorney, EFF/Washington Office
Congressional Record -- House
Wednesday, March 11, 1992
102nd Cong. 2nd Sess.
138 Cong Rec H 1168
REFERENCE: Vol. 138 No. 34
TITLE: LEGISLATION CALLING FOR REPEAL OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO
THE
CONSTITUTION
SPEAKER: Mr. OWENS of New York
TEXT:
[*H1168] The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Pelosi). Under a
previous order of the House, the gentleman from New York [Mr.
Owens] is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. OWENS of New York. Madam Speaker, today I have introduced a
resolution which calls for the repeal of the second amendment to
the Constitution. The second amendment to the Constitution reads as
follows:
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.
Madam Speaker, is the second amendment still necessary in 1992?
And does the second amendment, the existence of it, give the right
to the manufacturers of guns, the distributors of guns, the
fanatics who must have automatic weapons of all kinds, does it
provide a right to them?
Madam Speaker, I have been told that the second amendment does
not guarantee that right, but it is because the second amendment
has been distorted and is often misquoted to mislead the American
people to believe that because the second amendment exists we
should not and we cannot regulate the manufacture, the sale, and
the distribution of guns in the United States.
As a result of the notion being promulgated that we cannot
regulate the sale and distribution and manufacture of guns, we have
a paralysis by legislators across the country and by the Congress.
Repeatedly, public opinion polls have shown that the American
people do want more gun control. They want more regulation of guns.
Of course, a No. 1 issue across the Nation is crime and
solutions to the problem of crime. Madam Speaker, crimes of all
kinds I abhor, but crime which results in the death of individuals
is of particular concern and should be of particular concern to all
of us.
The recent tragic shootings of two young persons at Thomas
Jefferson High School in New York City has renewed interest in some
kind of immediate, urgent action to deal with guns and the gun
culture.
Madam Speaker, two young persons, one named Ian Moore and the
other's name is Tyrone Sinkler, they happen to live -- they
happened to live in my congressional district. The tense is
important here.
Thomas Jefferson School is not located in the district, but
these young people resided in the 12th Congressional District.
Somehow their shooting has shocked even New York City, which
has too many homicides and too many guns despite the fact that we
have very tight gun control laws in both New York City and New York
State. The fact is that these youngsters were murdered in cold
blood in a school; the fact is that the young man who pulled out
the gun and shot them has no fear of being caught and no concern
about snuffing out human life and taking his punishment
subsequently. In addition to the two persons being shot that day,
their lives being snuffed out immediately, another young person who
was a friend of theirs went home and, with a gun, committed
suicide, took his own life.
Mr. Speaker, in the space of 5 days in New York City there were
about 10 shootings. About five people were killed with guns. That
is in New York City, which is highly visible. They got a lot of
publicity, and all the world knows about it.
But what my colleagues do not know about is that all around the
country, in both rural communities and suburban communities, young
people are taking their lives and taking each other's lives in
large numbers. We know about the mass murders when automatic
weapons are being taken into post office buildings, and people
getting revenge for various reasons have snuffed out the life of
dozens of people. We know about the mass murder that took place in
a cafeteria where the target seemed to be primarily women. We know
about these. They get a lot of publicity. What we do not know is
that the statistics will show in school district after school
district across the country these incidents are taking place.
Mr. Speaker, I have been invited to serve as a moderator for a
panel, a teleconference, entitled "Challenges in Choices, Violence
in the Schools." This teleconference is sponsored by the National
Association of Secondary School Principals' urban services office.
It is going to take place next Wednesday. The brochure that was
sent to me starts as follows: It relates to incidents where young
people were murdered or young people were guilty of murdering
people in schools. In Pinellas County, FL, for example, an
assistant high school principal was killed and another
administrator and teacher at that school injured by students who
were armed with stolen revolvers. In Garden, KS, two teachers and a
junior high school principal were killed by a 14-year-old boy with
an automatic rifle. My colleagues did not hear any headlines about
this, and there are numerous other incidents that are taking place
all across the country that we do not read the headlines, we do not
see them on television. They are not in New York City with the
media present to publicize it, but it is happening all over, the
culture of the gun, the culture of violence. It has taken hold, and
this generation, which we could call the Rambo generation because
they are fed by films and videos that glorify violence, the Rambo
generation marches on, and [*H1169] the shock of having two young
people murdered in high school is appropriate.
Mr. Speaker, it means that we are one step closer to the
collapse of civilization. We are one step closer to the collapse of
our society. What will happen next? We will have young people
carrying guns into churches and murdering people in churches. It
would be another step closer to the collapse of civilization as we
know it.
What are we doing to protect our youth from senseless killing?
What are we doing as adults? As parents? And, most important, those
people who are most responsible for how our society works? What are
we doing as legislators? What are we doing as congresspersons to
protect our young people? Are we doing all we can do? Or are we
wimpishly bowing to a gun lobby and not a committee, civilized
actions, to be taken in order to control the manufacture, the sale,
and distribution of guns? What is different? What is the difference
between our society and other industrialized societies?
Japan, or Germany, or Great Britain, or France; why is it these
industrialized societies have a far lower set of casualties as a
result of gun play? Why is it that it goes way, way down, the
comparisons with Great Britain, and Germany and Japan? It is
astonishing in terms of the number of people who have been killed
by guns. These societies are able and willing to control the
manufacture, distribution, and sale of guns, and this society is
not.
The savage, barbaric behavior of a young man who whips out a
pistol and shoots dead two students in a high school is horrendous,
but in responding or failing to respond the Members of Congress and
any other State legislatures or city legislatures are equally as
savage and equally as barbaric if they do not take steps to use
their power to control the manufacture, sale, and distribution of
guns.
I have offered this resolution to repeal the second amendment
very seriously. I do not have any illusions about the fate of the
resolution in terms of its passage. I do not have any illusions
about the possibility of an amendment really taking place because,
even if Congress passes it, it has to go to State legislatures.
That is not my goal. My goal is to raise the level of debate,
accelerate the level of debate and discussion about and the need to
control the sale, manufacture, and distribution of guns in our
society. The democratic process often works well in the United
States. The will of the people is usually carried out sooner or
later by their elected legislators and officials. If they do not
act to carry out the will of the people, they are going to get
removed sooner or later, but not always is it sooner. Sometimes the
will of even a very large majority can be thwarted by a small group
of single-issue fanatics who use money and threats to intimidate
elected representatives so they fail to pass legislation that the
overwhelming majority of the people want.
Polls have clearly shown that 75 to 85 percent of the people
want some form of gun control, but we do not have gun control,
except to a very limited extent, because a small group of intense
gun fanatics have perverted the democratic process through threats
and intimidation of any public figure who dares to speak for and
vote for what the overwhelming majority of the people want.
Elections never provide a clear expression of public opinion on any
single issue since a vote is determined by a number of issues and
also by moves and political personalities. Thus the people never
send a strong, clear signal in favor of gun control because the
system does not give them the opportunity. But the single issue of
gun control fanatics are very clear in their message. They send a
message which is very powerful in their spending big money to
defeat candidates in their letter writing campaigns and their
intimidation of many elected officials.
Mr. Speaker, we must give the American people as a whole an
opportunity to express their opinion on control and regulation of
guns, especially the concealable handguns and the semiautomatics.
Let us have a public debate and discussion nationwide to find out
whether the people want to turn away from violence.
The second amendment is unnecessary in 1992. The purpose of the
second amendment is to assure the people's right to bear arms in a
well-regulated militia. Nobody would dream of interfering with the
use of guns by the National Guard, the Armed Forces Reserves, which
is our well-regulated militia, the Armed Forces Reserves, or any
local militia, or the police departments. We are not going to
interfere with it, and the right of that kind of well-regulated
militia is protected and understood without this amendment being in
place.
The second amendment has a very limited purpose and intent. It
is very clear the courts have interpreted that it does not mean
that we cannot control and regulate guns, the sale, the
manufacture, and distribution of guns. Congress can do that. We
have the power. But the second amendment has been twisted. Its
purpose and intent has been distorted and perverted by gun control
fanatics whose view it is that guns may not be regulated or
controlled in any way, and they have fooled us, hoodwinked the
American people into believing that we cannot control guns. We
violate the Constitution if we do so. The secondamendment does not
say anything like that, but they interpret it that way, and they
have managed to convince very large numbers of intelligent people
that any gun regulation is unconstitutional.
Are our rights as a free people jeopardized in 1992 by a
waiting period for the purchase of a handgun?
Are our rights as a free people jeopardized in 1992 by a
criminal investigation of purchases of guns? Are our rights as a
free people jeopardized by the regulation and supervision of gun
dealers? Are our rights as a free people jeopardized by severe
limitations on the manufacture, import, and sale of semiautomatics
and machineguns?
Certainly not. But the gun fanatics tell us the Republic will
be in danger if these modest measures are taken by the Congress.
The Congress has the power right now. It can do what is
necessary to regulate the manufacture, sale, and distribution of
guns.
Only Congress can have the necessary impact. It does no good
for New York City to pass strict gun control laws as it has already
done, or for New York State to pass strict gun control laws, as it
has already done, if the guns are freely available in other States
and can be transported across State lines, as they are.
We have only a handful of companies in this country that
manufacture guns. Their greed has pushed them to make them more and
more attractive. Weapons are more streamlined, more automatic. They
fire more bullets, and they are more deadly than ever before. They
are smaller and cheaper. So we are pushing guns the way we sell
soap at this point.
Only a barbaric society would continue to push deadly weapons
as if they were toys, or push deadly weapons as if they were
appliances. Here in Washington we have citizens who have taken the
initiative and passed an initiative which calls for liability, a
gun liability law, which makes the manufacturer, the dealers, and
all the people who have connections with the guns, liable when a
person is injured or killed by a gun.
There are people in Congress who are fighting that legislation.
We need the same legislation across the country in every State and
in every city.
Madam Speaker, let me share some articles. I am not going to
read them, but I would like for Members to read a series of
articles that have appeared in the New York Times. The fourth
article appeared today. These articles are about guns and the gun
culture, the gun manufacturers, the gun salespeople, the
proliferation of guns and what is behind them. This series of
articles started in the New York Times on Sunday, March 8, and have
appeared every day, March 8, March 9, March 10, and today, March
11, I urge Members and all others who want to take steps to end
this barbaric failure to regulate guns to get background on the
issue.
Madam Speaker, the CRS, the Congressional Research Service, has
also [*H1170] put out extensive information on public opinion
with respect to gun control, as well as gun control regulations.
When I asked for material from CRS I was delighted to hear that
many Members of Congress have requested the same kind of
information, and therefore they have the information readily
available.
So I would hope that those Members who are interested and have
gotten the information will join me in offering this resolution to
repeal the second amendment. I hope also we will take whatever
steps are necessary long before the second amendment finds its way
onto the floor of Congress to end the savage and barbaric
proliferation of guns in our society.
Madam Speaker, I cannot stress too much the accusation that I
am making, and that is that we are behaving in a barbaric and
savage fashion when we have the power to regulate guns and we
refuse to use that power.
Madam Speaker, I would like to call attention to an editorial
that appeared in New York Newsday as a reaction of my announcement
that I would introduce a resolution to repeal the second amendment.
Madam Speaker, it is entitled "Good Instinct, Wrong Policy:
Don't Touch the Bill of Rights." It read as follows:
GOOD INSTINCT, WRONG POLICY -- DON'T TOUCH THE BILL OF RIGHTS
U.S. Rep. Major Owens is so disturbed by the violence racking
his Brooklyn district that he's drafting a resolution that would
seek to repeal the Second Amendment -- the section of the Bill of
Rights that says: "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."
It's hard to blame Owens for wanting to take drastic action.
Since November, three students have been shot to death in the halls
of Thomas Jefferson High School in East New York. Homicides in the
neighborhood's 75th Precinct, one of the city's most violent, are
running ahead of last year's numbers. Still, Owens is misguided as
he works to drag the Second Amendment into the cross-hairs.
To the gun lobby, it's an article of faith that the Second
Amendment guarantees all Americans an absolute right to pack heat.
But the gun lobby -- led by the deep-pockets National Rifle
Association -- is wrong. In 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
the amendment does not prohibit the feds from controlling firearms.
The court over the years has been more than willing to stick with
that wisdom. What's more, says Dennis Hengian, director of the
Legal Action Project for the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence,
the court has never found that the Second Amendment even applies to
the states.
So why was the amendment written? Legal scholars say it was
drafted to protect citizens from abuses by a large standing army.
Before the revolution, the king's troops were sometimes quartered
in civilian homes -- to the distress of citizens. But because the
local militias had been disarmed, citizens had no choice but to
comply. The amendment was meant as a guarantee to citizens that
such abuses could not happen again.
By "militia," the gun crowd insists, drafters of the Bill of
Rights meant a university armed people, not a specific group. But
the Supreme Court has rejected that view. And no less a
conservative than former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger
has explained: "It's the simplest thing: a well-regulated militia.
If the militia -- which is what we now call the National Guard,
essentially -- has to be well-regulated, in heaven's name why
shouldn't we regulate 14-, 15-, 16-year-old kids having handguns or
hoodlums having machine guns?
If nothing else, says Owens, perhaps his resolution will start
a useful discussion about the urgent need for stronger gun-control
laws. Maybe so. But Congress doesn't need a constitutional
amendment to act. It needs a little more backbone in the face of a
strident and well-oiled lobbying machine.
Madam Speaker, I welcome the criticism of the New York Newsday
editorial, because they have done exactly what I wanted to happen:
They have escalated the debate and made the debate more visible. I
urge all Members to follow the debate, to follow the kind of
reaction which some newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal,
have had to the recent outbreak of violence in New York City, and,
of course, similar violence which has taken place across the
country.
Madam Speaker, the Wall Street Journal had an article on gun
manufacturers showing that 65 percent of the guns in the country
come from two manufacturers. I think, Madam Speaker, they are based
in California.
The series in the New York Times goes further and talks about
the entire gun culture, including the fact that we allow films and
movies to be promulgated in large numbers which glorify violence.
Congress has gotten very excited and allowed itself in many
cases to be stampeded on the issues of pornography. We have been
quite quiet on violence. There are films which promulgate and
glorify violence to no end. "Rambo" and the series of Rambo films
probably represents the greatest depth to which profit-hungry
Hollywood producers have gone to tap their desire for more violent
films.
Our children have been raised on this on television. We have
not sought to control the violence on television in any way. There
are some countries in this hemisphere who will not allow American
films to be shown because they are violent and because they want to
control what their youths see with respect to violence.
We at this point are not the only industrialized nation that
lacks gun control, but we are among the few. Most nations that are
industrialized do have tight control over the manufacture, sale,
and distribution of guns.
Madam Speaker, I hope that in the coming weeks and months we
will reconsider our position. We have a crime bill that is being
negotiated in conference now. That crime bill takes only very timid
steps. If you add the Brady amendment, as I understand has been
accomplished, the Brady amendment that we passed, the Brady bill
that was passed in the House of Representatives, as part of the
discussion in that conference, even if you add that bill it is only
a timid, small step taken toward the regulation of guns.
Madam Speaker, that bill is obsessed with the death penalty. It
adds many, many Federal requirements that the death penalty be
imposed for crimes totally out of step with what reality has shown.
The death penalty has not reduced violence or crimes at all.
The States which have executed the most people since the Supreme
Court allowed the renewal of punishment by death, those States have
the highest crime rates, and they are escalating. The homicide
rates are increasing. So the death penalty is not going to solve
the problem.
Gun control is a practical way to deal with the most lethal
weapon in the crime culture. If we can stop the slaughter of the
innocents, we will have taken a great step forward in protecting
our people. It is our duty to do that. We should stop acting
barbaric. We should stop acting savage.
We should accept our responsibilities and do the civilized
thing, foster and promote laws which control the sale,
distribution, and manufacture of guns. We can do no more for people
like Ian Moore and the other three youngsters, two youngsters who
died on the same day.
There is a long list. We could recite them on the floor of this
House, and maybe it would be good to recite a list of all the young
people who have died in the last few years from gunshot wounds. It
might bring us to our senses.
We are not protecting our children. Any civilization that
cannot protect its children does not deserve to be called a
civilization. I hope we will remember that.