Bad people

do bad things

Ms. Hodges quotes from my previous letter: “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the US who are Peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”

Then she adds: “That’s correct. No law-abiding citizen who registers their gun, honors a wait period or chooses a weapon for hunting or self-defense is going to be denied the purchase of a firearm.”

Ms. Hodges, other than a NICS background check, there are no Federal laws requiring the registration of a firearm, a waiting period, nor restricting semi-auto firearms. The Founding Fathers never intended such restrictions. One cannot buy a machine gun or a rocket launcher at Walmart. Felons are barred from owning guns. Still mass shootings continue because criminals do not obey the law. Laws don’t keep bad people from doing bad things. They only punish bad people after they do bad things.

The New York legislature violated the 2nd Amendment by requiring adults over 21 to have a permit to purchase a semi-auto rifle. That’s infringement. Imagine if one has required to obtain a permit to write letters to the editor, or practice one’s religion. In Jim Crow South, the poll tax, written tests, and other methods were employed to prevent Black citizens from exercising their rights to vote.

Free Black citizens before, during, and after the Civil war were prevented or restricted from owning personal firearms. Despite the passing of the 14th amendment in 1866 to protect the civil rights for all Americans, including Black citizens, Jim Crow laws hindered Black citizens from owning private firearms, leaving them helpless to the depredations of the KKK. Ask Native American Indians how well that worked for them when they were disarmed at Wounded Knee. Such registration, permits, and other bureaucratic tools can be negatively employed to prevent citizens from exercising their civil rights.

Black WWII veterans provided security for MLK’s marches. They openly carried the same type of semi-auto M1 rifles and carbines they were issued as soldiers. These “weapons of war” were legal to own, whether or not one was a veteran. These surplus military rifles were carried proudly by these Black vets to guard those participating in MLK’s marches from violent racist onlookers. These Black war veterans were no longer in the military, were not required to own a permit, pass a test, endure a waiting period, or registered these rifles to legally own them. The 2ndAmendment protected their right as citizens to carry them to protect peaceful protesters exercising their right to free speech. To infringe one inalienable right creates a precedent that leaves all others, such as free speech, vulnerable as well.

There are 4 million gun owners in New York alone. This latest law threatens to restrict their inalienable 2nd Amendment rights by retroactively making them criminals for firearms they legally purchased and responsibly owned decades prior. In my view this is no less egregious than the Jim Crow laws of the past that sought to keep Black citizens in the South from exercising all their civil liberties with regulations.

Ron Shirtz
Rensselaer Falls