Rifle group appeals handgun ban to high court

[jody]

Source: Houston Chronicle -

WASHINGTON — The National Rifle Association is asking the Supreme Court to strike down strict gun control laws in the Chicago area, setting the stage for another high court battle over Second Amendment protections for gun owners.

The NRA wants the court to rule that last year's gun rights decision invalidating a handgun ban in the District of Columbia applies as well to local and state laws.

The appeal to the Supreme Court comes almost immediately after a federal appeals court in Chicago said Tuesday that it is bound by earlier Supreme Court decisions which held the Second Amendment applies only to federal laws. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was part of an appeals court panel in New York that reached a similar conclusion in January.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/washington/6457910.html

---

Obama said "I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people's lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won't take your handgun away."

Democratic Party 2008 Platform says “We recognize that the right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we will preserve Americans' Second Amendment right to own and use firearms.”

Democrats who support the Second Amendment will soon know by the briefs filed on the above case by the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in the Senate and House whether they support the Second Amendment.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hard2believe]

2. Fed up

This whole NRA lobby shtick is the laughing stock of the world. Here we are, the most industrialized country in the world and the "greatest" yet we have what, 40,000 people killed a year by guns and another 70,000 injured. The fact that this is even an issue in this country is deplorable. No matter how many times there is a death by gun or mass death by gun there are still those who will want you to believe in archaic rights that were seen to be archaic even in Tombstone. Damn, this makes me angry.

AK 47's are legal here in the US yet I have heard numerous people argue about confiscating them from Afghans. Why? Their laws say they can have them. Is it because they might shoot someone with it? Oh, they are barbarians. sheeeeh. Damn, the wingers make me angrier.

[jody]

3. There are several anti-groups that would ban rights, e.g. anti-abortion, anti-GLBT. You are in good

company with the anti-crowd.

[Hard2believe]

6. Anti-crowd

Do you see anything wrong, even remotely out of whack with the number of people killed every year either by accident of through murder or suicide in anyway shape or form disturbing?

Instead of using the methods of the right wing groups to address a topic by ignoring it,and then use childish anti this and anti that, why don't you try to explain to me why this country, the most industrialized in the world is the most violent with respect to guns? The gun deaths here in the US per 100,000 is even higher than developing worlds. Please explain why this is so.

[Deadric Damodred]

7. It's sad that it happens...

...but it does. I'm really more interested in the individual civil right of Americans to own firearms than any sob stories you want to tell. I tell you what, why don't you do the cry'in for the rest of us while we continue to slap the anti-gun lobby around in court. Take care now.

[Euromutt]

9. Why are you focusing on gun deaths?

The entire former Soviet Union, including the Baltics (which are now members of the EU), has both homicide and suicide rates that are significantly higher than the American rates (Russia has more than three times as many of each, and that's down from the 1990s). The ex-Sovs just don't use guns quite as much as Americans do (though organized crime uses them quite a lot, strict firearms laws notwithstanding). But is someone who has been beaten or stabbed to death any less dead than someone who's been shot? Surely what matters is violent crime overall, not just violent crime committed with guns.

Why does the US have a higher gun death rate than most developing countries? Because they can't afford guns. Doesn't mean they don't kill each other in larger numbers. Just take the Rwandan genocide of 1994: 800,000 dead out of a population of 7.2 million in 100 days; does that not matter because the murders were overwhelmingly committed with cheap Chinese-made machetes rather than guns? South Africa, Venezuela, Thailand, to name a few, all have higher homicide rates than the US.

In 2007/2008, the South African homicide rate was 38.6/100,000, compared to 5.9/100,000 for the United States. Of South African homicides, 45% that year were committed with firearms, for a firearm homicide rate of ~17.4. The American firearm homicide rate for 2007 hasn't been published yet, but typically about 2/3 of American homicides are committed using a firearm. So the South African gun homicide rate alone was almost three times the American total homicide rate, and probably over four times the American firearm homicide rate.

You might want to revise that opinion that the United States is "the most violent with respect to guns." Colombia's probably a lot worse too.

Moreover, the US homicide is quite unremarkable compared to other wealthy industrialized nations if you factor out young (under 35) urban black males, as victims but especially as offenders. Why? Because this is the demographic most likely, due to socio-economic and cultural pressures, to be involved in the retail drug trade. Because the drug trade is illegal, the only way to permanently resolve "business disputes" is by murdering the other party involved, and this has a brutalizing effect so that these men come to regard killing other people as the only way of resolving disputes. Your girlfriend leaves you for another guy? You kill him. Someone "disrespects" you? You kill him. And then there's the routine murdering of anyone who is so much as suspected of giving information to law enforcement, let alone testifying in a criminal trial.

This shit does not happen just because there are a lot of guns in America. In fact, it would probably happen if there weren't a lot of guns, not in the least place because people who do business with other people who are in the business of bringing large amounts of contraband into the country have access to non-domestic sources of firearms. The Chinese really don't give a fuck who they sell guns to, and neither do a few too many eastern European sources.

[gorfle]

11. On suicide and crime.

Do you see anything wrong, even remotely out of whack with the number of people killed every year either by accident of through murder or suicide in anyway shape or form disturbing?

Of course I do. But I'm not going to forgo the right to keep and bear arms in an attempt to prevent suicides or accidents. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who would forsake essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Instead of using the methods of the right wing groups to address a topic by ignoring it,and then use childish anti this and anti that, why don't you try to explain to me why this country, the most industrialized in the world is the most violent with respect to guns? The gun deaths here in the US per 100,000 is even higher than developing worlds. Please explain why this is so.

There are many factors that contribute to this. No doubt the relatively easy access to firearms contributes to this. As I see it, this is simply the price we all collectively pay for having access to the means to defend ourselves from oppression as our founders intended. No doubt weapons, even firearms, were used for ill means even in the Founders' day. Yet they saw fit to enumerate the right of the people to be armed with modern military arms so as to insure against tyranny and oppression by modern military forces.

I don't want to trivialize the 10,000 annual homicides attributed to firearms, but I don't lose much sleep over it considering tobacco, alcohol, and motor vehicles kill far more people annually.

Further, I strongly suspect that the vast bulk of firearm crime in the US is drug and gang-related. If the US would tackle the social and economic problems that stem from it's absurd drug policies you would likely find that all crime, including firearm-related crime, would plummet.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

23. That's the LAMEST guilt-by-association attempt in the history of ever.

I suppose that anti-racism is bad, too?

[paulsby]

4. archaic lol.

i find your lack of support for civil rights disturbing.

[Hard2believe]

5. reply

I find that you evading the content of what I wrote more disturbing.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

8. Ignorance apparently is not bliss.

Where to start? 40,000 people aren't killed a year by guns in the US. More than half of those that are killed are suicides. AK-47's aren't legal to own unless you have passed very extensive background checks, paid thousands in permits and fees, gotten permission from your local Chief of Police, etc. There are very few legally owned AK-47's in the US.


David

[Hard2believe]

13. Ignorance in your case seems to be bliss

David, as you call yourself. 40,000 people ARE killed per year in the US. Whether it be suicide or murder or accident, dead is dead. 70,000 are injured, most of that number, seriously. AK-47's ARE legal in this country. doing what you suggest to them makes them illegal. However, they are LEGAL to purchase.

[Euromutt]

14. Some queries and clarifications

Currently, the number of gun dead annually in the US is more along the lines of 30,000, rather than 40,000. As Dave notes, more than half are suicides, and given the fact that various countries with tighter firearm laws have higher suicide rates than the US, there is no reason to assume that, deprived of firearms, those people wouldn't find some other way to kill themselves. Hanging is the leading method outside the US, I believe. And, as you say, Hard2beleive (nomen est omen), dead is dead; a person dead by hanging or jumping in front of a train is just as dead as someone who's shot himself. And we're not going to get rid of rope or trains, or bath salts and toilet cleaner (used to make hydrogen sulfide gas, Japan's fashionable suicide method last year; and unlike with guns, you can kill everyone in the house even after you're already dead).

You evidently need a primer on Kalashnikovs and their derivatives. The Avtomat Kalashnikova ("Kalashnikov's automatic {rifle}"), model of 1947--or "AK-47" for short--is a specific model of selective-fire weapon chambered in 7.62x39mm. It was replaced in Soviet service by the AKM (Avtomat Kalashnikova Modernizirovannyj - "Kalashnikov's Automatic {rifle}, Modernized"), which in turn was replaced by the AK-74, chambered in 5.45x39mm. Being capable of automatic fire, such weapons are regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934, and have been illegal to import into the United States since the entry into force of the Gun Control Act of 1968.

The weapons to which you refer, Hard2believe, are "AK derivatives," rifles that use the same mechanism (or "action") as the AK-47, AKM and AK-74 and their license-built copies, but are capable only of semi-automatic fire, may be chambered for different rounds (such as the 5.56x45mm NATO), and may possess or lack features not found on the original AK-47 design. To refer to such firearms as "AK-47"s is analogous to referring to all PCs as "IBM"s, with the distinction that current-production PCs are better than the original IBM PC, whereas semi-auto-only AK derivatives are arguably a step back.

Now, to echo a question I posed earlier in this thread (post #9), if you believe that "dead is dead," why are you focused exclusively on the number of gun deaths in the US, especially as compared to other countries? There's no shortage of countries with higher homicide and/or suicide rates, so why is it significant--given that "dead is dead"--that Americans choose to shoot each other and themselves relatively frequently, rather than beating, strangling, stabbing or bludgeoning each other to death, or hanging or gassing themselves or jumping off tall buildings or throwing themselves in front of trains (which can really emotionally fuck up the driver, by the way) like they do in more "civilized" countries?

[DonP]

19. I'm waiting for the inevitable ... "I don't have to know how the gun works ..."

Nice, reasonable post.

It seems the people that actually think every AK is a machine gun is endless. (Thank you Sarah Brady!)

But the number we encounter here that are ignorant of any facts (and damned proud of it too!) on how these guns work, and insist that they are all easily converted to machine guns anyway, is endless too.

I doubt you'll get a response from the poster. Too many facts and too much reality to be absorbed.

But you did an excellent job of setting the facts on the table in front of them. If they choose not to learn, that's their problem.

[Hard2believe]

21. Reply

Now, to echo a question I posed earlier in this thread (post #9), if you believe that "dead is dead," why are you focused exclusively on the number of gun deaths in the US, especially as compared to other countries? There's no shortage of countries with higher homicide and/or suicide rates, so why is it significant--given that "dead is dead"--that Americans choose to shoot each other and themselves relatively frequently, rather than beating, strangling, stabbing or bludgeoning each other to death, or hanging or gassing themselves or jumping off tall buildings or throwing themselves in front of trains (which can really emotionally fuck up the driver, by the way) like they do in more "civilized" countries?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At the beginning of your post you did just as every gun advocate. You addressed the mechanism of a particular weapon and tried to make it some sort of toy. Reminds me of the idiotic mantra from the NRA " Guns don't kill people, people kill people". Simplistic, condescending and nonfactual.

To address your point about countries with higher suicide and murder rates than the US I suggest you read that I stated in the industrialized world. That means, here in the US we have more murders and suicides in the US, "the greatest country in the world" than in all the European countries combined. Now, I use Europe as an example because it is in total the same per capita in population rate as us.

Secondly, because, and I'm sure there must be some psychiatrist or Psychologist on the board that will back up this statement. Suicide is a spontaneous act. Guns make it easier. No time to think. Walk in front of a train,the same. Hanging, initially spontaneous but when asphyxiation sets in the ill person struggles to get free as is the norm for any living creature. That's a fact. Not a theory of mine.

When I was studying the very first SSRI, known as Zelmid, Zemeldine, the pills were put in blister packs. The reason being that giving a medication to a person with a susceptibility to suicidal tendencies compelled them to go to the extent of having to individually have to force the pill from the packaging thereby giving them time to think of what they were doing.

Facts we studied at the time was that a gun in the home was seven times more likely to be used in a suicide than one that has not. In simple terms, the home without the gun is more likely to have the suicidal person seek help.

According to the WHO {World Health Organization}, there are 16.8 suicides by gun per year compared to 6.8 in the UK. Now, these figures are adjusted to meet all criteria including of course the obvious,population. So with trains planes and automobiles there are 10 more suicides per year in the US. This was handgun deaths. Now since there is a law in the UK that handguns are illegal it is a fair and intelligent deduction to assume that if guns were more readily available in the UK then the death rate would be higher. That is of course you hold to the notion that the US is more prone to personal violence and gun availability has nothing to do with this staggering statistic.

Now, lets turn to murder with weapons and keep in mind we are talking about industrialized countries. In the UK, there are fewer than five death per million population annually. In the US, it is 140 per million.

A step farther. The US has a higher rate of murder annually by handgun than does Brazil, counted as a developing world.The rate in Brazil is high, 120 per million.

Now, argue what you may, statistics do not lie. Prevalence of a plague causes more death than where it is eradicated or CONTROLLED.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

20. The CDC says you are wrong.

All firearms related deaths, all intents, all races, all ages

2006 30,896
2005 30,694
2004 29,569
2003 30,136
2002 30,242
2001 29,573
2000 28,663
1999 28,874

http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate.html

In regards to AK-47's while legal they are heavily restricted, incredibly expensive and virtually never used in crimes.

David

[gorfle]

10. Number of people killed.

Here we are, the most industrialized country in the world and the "greatest" yet we have what, 40,000 people killed a year by guns and another 70,000 injured.

Actually, according to FBI data, posted here frequently, there are only about 10,000 homicides attributed to firearms annually. Considering the 40-80 million firearm owners in the US, this means only .02% to .01% of firearm owners are involved in such homicides.

All rifles, let alone assault rifles, account for less than 3% of homicides annually - less than half as many as hands and feet do.

No matter how many times there is a death by gun or mass death by gun there are still those who will want you to believe in archaic rights that were seen to be archaic even in Tombstone. Damn, this makes me angry.

The ability to defend oneself from tyranny, even by technologically inferior means, is not archaic. Just ask the Vietnamese, the Afghans, or the Iraqis, for some modern examples.

AK 47's are legal here in the US yet I have heard numerous people argue about confiscating them from Afghans. Why?

True fully-automatic AK47s are very rare in the United States and, while legal to own after paying the appropriate tax and paperwork, are almost never used in crime. I believe there have been two murders committed in the last 50 years using fully-automatic weapons, and both were committed by police officers.

Semi-automatic civilian versions of AK47s are common, but other than being exceptionally rugged, there is nothing particularly special about them. They are a medium-powered semi-automatic rifle. And it is functionally no different than this Ruger Mini-30.



And of course such rifles are used far less than half as many times to commit murder each year than hands and feet are.

And you won't find me calling for the disarmament of Afghans. It's my belief that much of the strife, victimization, and refugees in the world today are the result of people who have no means to stand up to oppression.

[slackmaster]

12. The "AK-47s" that are easily available here are not the same as the ones being confiscated in A-stan

The former are semiautomatic, the latter selective-fire and thus heavily regulated under a federal law that is having its 75th birthday this year.

[spin]

15. Welcome to DU...

Read the pro-gun posts and do some research. You may be surprised to find that you have some misconceptions on the issue of firearms.

This is not surprising, organizations such as the Brady Campaign constantly lie and exaggerate.

[Hard2believe]

22. Welcome

Thank you for the welcome. I have been here before but, alas have lost my user name.

I don't have to study these reports as that is what I do on a regular basis which is applicable to my method of employ.

But, thanks for the suggestion and welcome.

[benEzra]

16. No, AK-47's like those in Iraqi and Afghani homes are VERY tightly controlled here.

U.S. civilians are limited to non-automatic, non-sound-suppressed small arms under .51 caliber, plus over-.50 shotguns and a few over-.50 hunting rifles. Possession of an actual AK-47 here outside of police/military duty without Federal authorization (BATFE Form 4) is a 10-year Federal felony.

I own a non-automatic civilian-only AK lookalike, FWIW. It works like an ordinary pistol or squirrel rifle, not like a military automatic weapon.

[TheWraith]

17. The guns they have in Afghanistan are not legal in the US.

In the US, automatic weapons are governed under the National Firearms Act of 1934. Contrary to popular myth, you cannot simply buy them in a gun shop--the "AK-47s" that are sold here are semi-auto knockoffs with little in common to the real thing.

By the way, there's about 30,000 gun deaths a year in the US, and 60% of them are suicides. Compare the remaining 13,000 to the 40,000 people a year who die from car accidents, or the 80,000 who die from air pollution, for a sense of perspective. You want to reduce that number? Start really dealing with poverty in this country, and quit harassing legal gun owners.

[Hoopla Phil]

18. Yep and this is a good thing. The Heller decision was a good one but

it left many questions unanswered. One is the issue of incorporation and the other is regarding the scrutiny level. I can see how the incorporation issue wasn't answered as this case was based in D.C. but they really dropped the ball on scrutiny level. That has left the powers that be in D.C. playing "dodge the decision" and getting around the intent behind Heller as much as possible.

So now we have courts across the U.S. giving different decisions based on the unanswered issues in the Heller decision. SCOTUS will have to take up one of these cases to insure everyone is on the same page.