To the Editor:
Re “The
Court and the Bill of Rights: Ignoring the Reality of Guns”
(editorial, June 29):
If anyone is “ignoring” the reality of guns, it isn’t the Supreme Court,
but your editorial board. Crime rates across the country are steadily
decreasing as firearms ownership soars to record levels. This week’s
Supreme Court ruling ensuring that all law-abiding citizens, whether
they live in a big city like Chicago or in rural Wyoming, have the same
American right to keep and bear arms is welcome, necessary and just.
The Second Amendment is a right of individuals. Rights, by definition,
are individual.
You were right about one thing, however: this week’s decision marks the
beginning of a new era of civil rights litigation as laws and
regulations that infringe upon and violate the individual right of
law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms, protected by the Second
Amendment, are challenged.
Lawrence G. Keane
Newtown, Conn., June 30, 2010
The writer is senior vice president and general counsel for the
National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the
firearms industry.
To the Editor:
I am flummoxed by the Supreme Court’s recent decision on gun control.
The court acknowledges that restraints on gun ownership can be
constitutionally imposed in certain spaces like courthouses or schools,
but not in larger areas like the city of Chicago where gun violence is
well documented.
For example, carrying a loaded handgun into a federal building is
prohibited (except for federal agents); all those occupants are thus
protected from gun violence. So why then is it impermissible to provide
similar protection to other public spaces?
Surely if it is important for people in a courtroom or school to be free
from the threat of gun violence, is it not equally important for those
of us who do not occupy such protected spaces to be free from the threat
of being shot?
William Ibershof
Mill Valley, Calif., June 29, 2010
The writer is a former federal prosecutor.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 