Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
The Second Amendment shouldn’t be a partisan thing. It’s a right enshrined in our Constitution, one lawmakers from both parties swear to support and defend upon taking office.
However, reality has a funny way of working out differently than it should.
As a result, Republicans tend to support the Second Amendment while Democrats tend to be the ones eager to upend it.
It’s not a universal thing–there are pro-gun Democrats and anti-gun Republicans, after all–but, by and large, that’s how it works out, anyway.
And now a couple of Republicans are taking steps to defend the Second Amendment just a bit more.
Senate Republicans on Thursday introduced legislation to nationally codify the right of Americans to both own guns and use them for self-defense outside the home.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the legislation is intended to protect court rulings in two key gun rights cases by writing them into law.
Those cases are Washington, D.C. v. Heller and New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. The Heller case found that Americans have an individual right to bear arms irrespective of participation in a militia. The Bruen case held that Americans have the right to carry firearms outside their homes.
“There’s nothing in the Second Amendment about ‘You can own a gun in your home and nowhere else,’” Graham said in a news conference, according to Fox News. “(Liberals) want to change that law, and if they get control of the Supreme Court these cases will change.
“This is a concerted effort to attack the fundamentals of the Second Amendment as part of an effort to maintain control of the Senate, take back the House and win the White House,” Graham said. “To conservatives, this is a wake-up call. We need you. Understand what’s going on here.”
Now, let’s start by me saying I like it. I like where their head is at on this.
With that said, let’s also be realistic. Absolutely nothing is going to happen.
For one thing, the Senate isn’t Republican-controlled. That means there’s absolutely no chance of this even coming up for a vote, much less passing if it did.
Sure, the House would likely vote for it, but that means nothing in and of itself.
The upside here is that it doesn’t matter. Supreme Court decisions ultimately carry enough force on their own that we don’t need laws saying the same thing. Not right now, anyway. Further, even if the law is passed, an anti-gun Supreme Court could arguably overturn those laws, so I don’t really see what this would truly accomplish.
Yet if it would do something I can’t help but wonder why do it now.
The Heller decision was over a decade ago. The Bruen decision wasn’t necessarily needed before any GOP-controlled Congress–you know, like the one we had a few years ago–could have passed all of this as federal law. They didn’t. It wasn’t even up for discussion.
So while I like where their head is on this, I wonder where it was a few years back when they could have actually done something.
https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/03/17/republican-pro-2a-law-n68527