{"id":1026,"date":"2013-04-12T21:32:20","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T20:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2013-04-12T21:32:20","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T20:32:20","slug":"nra-supports-like-minded-legal-scholars-to-reshape-gun-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/2013\/04\/12\/nra-supports-like-minded-legal-scholars-to-reshape-gun-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"NRA supports like-minded legal ‘scholars’ to reshape gun laws"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month the Washington Post had a story describing the role the NRA has played in shaping current US gun regulations. This is an excerpt which I hope will persuade blog readers that my apparent obsession with the NRA is fully justified.<\/p>\n

As recently as 1977 the role of the second amendment to the US constitution was still unclear. But the occupant of a chair in ”\u00a0constitutional law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University, endowed by the National Rifle Association argued that it gave Americans a legal right to own guns and this was affirmed by\u00a0\u00a0the Supreme Court in 2008, making some of the District\u2019s strict gun-control laws ineffective. \u00a0The current push for stronger\u00a0gun-control legislation will have to overcome the\u00a0transformation brought about by lawyers backed by the NRA when the ruling was made.\u00a0\u201cI think this was one of the most successful attempts to change the law and to change a legal paradigm in history,\u201d said Carl T. Bogus, a professor at\u00a0Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island. \u00a0 \u201cThey (the NRA) were thinking strategically. I don\u2019t think the NRA funds scholarship out of academic interest. I think the NRA funds something because it has a political objective.\u201d Prior to the Supreme Court challenge,\u00a0the consensus view “was that the Second Amendment granted a collective right\u201d enjoyed by the states, not individuals… Under this interpretation, the Constitution provides no right for an individual to possess a firearm.” \u00a0Then a series of legal articles began to appear and eventually a majority supported the “individual-rights position”. It was evident that much of this was prompted by NRA financial support. \u00a0As one lawyer put it,\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI would think that\u2019s important in the sense that scholars, unless you\u2019re independently wealthy, you need to be paid for your time.\u201d The debate then revolved around transparency; did authors reveal where the funding came from or not? \u00a0One of the leading supporters was a\u00a0professor of constitutional law at the University of Texas at Austin who published \u201cThe Embarrassing Second Amendment\u201d in the Yale Law Journal. It was sympathetic to the \u201cinsurrectionist theory\u201d that citizens have a right to be armed so they can fight their government if it becomes tyrannical. By\u00a01997, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, \u201cMarshaling an impressive array of historical evidence, a growing body of scholarly commentary indicates that the \u2018right to keep and bear arms\u2019 is, as the Amendment text suggests, a personal right.\u201d Six years later the NRA foundation\u00a0endowed the Patrick Henry chair at George Mason University with $1\u00a0million.\u00a0For advocates of an individual\u2019s right to bear arms, the\u00a0Heller\u00a0<\/em>decision in 2008 was a vindication. In writing the majority opinion, Justice Scalia said, \u201cThe second amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm, unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.\u201d Comforting words for parents of children killed in Newtown.<\/p>\n

For more:\u00a0http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/nra-money-helped-reshape-gun-law\/2013\/03\/13\/7<\/p>\n<\/article>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month the Washington Post had a story describing the role the NRA has played in shaping current US gun regulations. This is an excerpt which I hope will persuade blog readers that my apparent obsession with the NRA is fully justified. As recently as 1977 the role of the second amendment to the US […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2731],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gun-violence"],"yoast_head":"\nNRA supports like-minded legal 'scholars' to reshape gun laws - Injury Prevention: Editor's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/2013\/04\/12\/nra-supports-like-minded-legal-scholars-to-reshape-gun-laws\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NRA supports like-minded legal 'scholars' to reshape gun laws - Injury Prevention: Editor's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last month the Washington Post had a story describing the role the NRA has played in shaping current US gun regulations. 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