Mass shootings are occurring with increasing frequency, as are gun homicides.
Among the reasons for this horrific trend are “too many guns.” Another reason, of course, is the problematic lax rules about the sales and purchasing of these weapons.”
But there is another significant factor. Gun control advocates have lost the contest to control guns without much fighting. Public campaigns drive public opinion, and public opinion is currently heavily on the side of the gun lobby.
We should remember that until this present Supreme Court went rogue, the public’s view of the Constitution mattered, and that fact is what the gun lobby used to bring about our current situation.
The Heller v. District of Columbia decision in 2008 established the right of individuals to own guns for the first time. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens blames that decision for many gun deaths, as do many others.
In the 1970s, the gun lobby and gun rights proponents decided the right to bear arms wasn’t just for well-regulated state militias, as the one-sentence Second Amendment states. So they developed a new reading of the Second Amendment that NRA activists and Republican politicians repeated for decades.
Eventually, the public came to believe the Constitution guaranteed an individual right to bear arms, despite the Supreme Court having long held it did not. According to the Gallup Poll, in 1959, 60 percent of Americans thought a law should be enacted to ban handguns, except for police and related personnel. By 2008 when the decision came down, only 29 percent thought so. On the other hand, three-fourths of the public believed in an individual right to own guns. The gun lobby’s campaign worked.
Then in the Heller case, in a 5-4 vote, the Court adopted an interpretation in line with where the gun lobby had moved the public. The opinion written by the late Justice Scalia flipped the understanding of the Second Amendment to individuals having the right to bear arms.
In the early 1990s, in interviews and an article he wrote, conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger said:
- The Gun Lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American People by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies—the militia—would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.
The late Justice John Paul Stevens, who served 35 years on the Supreme Court, wrote a dissenting opinion in the Heller case. In his memoir, he called the Heller decision creating an individual right to bear arms “unquestionably the most clearly incorrect decision” in all his years on the Court. In an interview just before he died at age 99, Justice Stevens argued that the Heller decision has had “disastrous practical effects” contributing to countless gun tragedies that are “multiplying one after another.”
Too often, we hear would-be gun control advocates expressing strong support for the so-called Second Amendment rights of people pushing guns everywhere when it only became so by the dictate of the Supreme Court in 2008.
Yes, we should obey the law. But gun control advocates should fight as the anti-abortion people did ever since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which eventually brought about the Dobbs decision severely limiting abortion. And they should fight like current pro-abortion warriors to restore abortion rights. So, yes, respect the law, but fight like hell to change it.
The fight to affect public opinion and the possible fate of gun control is one-sided. Only the gun lobby is heard. In comparison, gun control advocates concede the battle to a questionable ruling by a conservative Court majority just 14 years ago.