Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [b--l] at [acrm63.wh.att.com] (-W.SHUGARD)
Subject: NY Times Letter to Editor
Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 17:55:49 GMT

Letter to the editor in the
May 12 New York Times.

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I was disappointed to see an advertisement on guns signed by other
professors of constitutional law (National Edition, May 2).  The
advertisement made two main points. The first is that the Second
Amendment does not prohibit sensible gun regulations -- something that
is undeniably true.  The other is that the Second Amendment merely
protects arms ownership by state national guards, not individual
citizens -- something that is just as clearly false.

The signers of the advertisement can be forgiven for their error. Not
one of them has ever written a scholarly work on the right to bear
arms, making their opinion on the subject only slightly more informed
than their opinion on questions of nuclear physics. The writings of
scholars who have written on the subject are virtually united on the
point that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep
and bear arms, not simply the state national guards.

As Joyce Malcom, a history professor, states in a book just published
by Harvard University Press, "The argument that today's National
Guardsmen, members of a select militia, would constitute the only
persons entitled to keep and bear arms has no historical foundation."
Or as Akhil Amar, Yale law professor, writes in the Yale Law Journal,
the "right to keep and bear arms belongs to 'the people,' not 'the
states.'" He adds, "the people at the core of the Second Amendment are
the same people as the heart of the Preamble and the First Amendment,
namely citizens." William Van Alstyne, in the current Duke Law Journal,
calls the essential Second Amendment claim advanced by the National
Rifle Association "extremely strong".

The advertisement is thus deceptive when it suggests that the argument
that the Second Amendment protects individual arms ownership is a
"fraud" that no respectable constitutional scholar would endorse.  The
ad also disappoints me, a liberal professor of constitutional law who
worked for the same Dukakis for President campaign that Susan Estrich,
one of the ad's signers, chaired.

Until recently, the use of specious "strict construction" arguments to
narrow constitutional rights was the province of right-wing scholars.
Now this disease has spread to those on the left.  A fidelity to our
task as constitutional scholars, and as citizens, requires us to take
the *entire* Constitution seriously, rather than simply picking and
choosing those parts we like

Glenn Harlan Reynold
Associate Professor of Law
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, May 3, 1994


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      Bill Shugard            |      I do not speak for my company.
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