2nd Amendment Rights, More Important Than Ever

Supremes Opportunity to Restore the Constitution
Wednesday, November 21, 2007 - FreeMarketNews.com
"The decision by the Supreme Court to rule on the DC gun ban gives them an historic opportunity to return to the original meaning of the Second Amendment," said Gun Owners of America's executive director, Larry Pratt."The case, Heller v. D.C., resulted in nullification of the gun ban in the District of Columbia. Judge Laurence Silberman wrote the majority opinion for the DC Court of Appeals which decided that the DC law violated the individual right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment. "Silberman's opinion was based on an extensive review of the historical record which makes it clear that the militia is a mandatory body comprised of all military-aged males who must own their own military weapons. He found that the 'state' referred to in the Second Amendment is a reference to society, not a political entity," Pratt said."The response of the District of Columbia reflects not only an ignorance of the Constitution, but the bloody record of the gun ban in the District. DC Mayor Adrian Fenty has lamented the excess of handguns in the District, and the citizens who are dying because of them."This is hardly a reason to ignore the Constitution, much less because the Mayor's position is totally false," Pratt continued. "There are not enough guns in the District. Other than the police, only criminals have them. That is why they are so brazen. Assailants are much more restrained in neighboring Virginia where the murder rate -- in Fairfax County -- was 0.3 per 100,000 people in 2005. In the same year in DC, the murder rate was 100 times greater at 35 per 100,000."Gun Owners of America encourages the Supreme Court to tell the DC solons: 'You already have the most effective crime fighting tool at your disposal which you should use -- the Second Amendment,'" Pratt concluded.Larry Pratt is the Executive Director for Gun Owners of America, a national gun lobby with over 300,000 members. GOA is located at 8001 Forbes Place, Springfield, VA 22151 and at