Original Message Date: 12 Jun 92 18:51:21 From: Uucp on 1:125/555 To: Tom Jennings on 1:125/111 Subj: Re: Serious attempt to repeal part of the Bill of Rights ^AINTL 1:125/111 1:125/555 From kumr!eff.org!van From: van@eff.org (Gerard Van der Leun) To: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu, gnu@toad.com Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1992 12:40:53 -0400 Cc: jwarren@autodesk.com, tom@toad.com, junk@cygnus.com, eff-board@eff.org, I asked Shari Steele in our Washington office to look into the message concerning the repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Here is her reply and pertinent document. -- Gerard/ EFF/Cambridge ======================================== Well, guys, it's true. Major Owens, Representative from New York, did introduce a resolution to repeal the 2nd Amendment on March 11. I am attaching the transcript from the Congressional Record. However, it should be noted that Rep. Owens himself said, "[Repealing the 2nd Amendment] is not my goal. My goal is to raise the level of debate, accelerate the level of debate and discussion about and the need to control the sale, manufacture, and distribution of guns in our society." Let me know if I can be of any more help! Shari, Attorney, EFF/Washington Office Congressional Record -- House Wednesday, March 11, 1992 102nd Cong. 2nd Sess. 138 Cong Rec H 1168 REFERENCE: Vol. 138 No. 34 TITLE: LEGISLATION CALLING FOR REPEAL OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION SPEAKER: Mr. OWENS of New York TEXT: [*H1168] The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Pelosi). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 minutes. Mr. OWENS of New York. Madam Speaker, today I have introduced a resolution which calls for the repeal of the second amendment to the Constitution. The second amendment to the Constitution reads as follows: A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Madam Speaker, is the second amendment still necessary in 1992? And does the second amendment, the existence of it, give the right to the manufacturers of guns, the distributors of guns, the fanatics who must have automatic weapons of all kinds, does it provide a right to them? Madam Speaker, I have been told that the second amendment does not guarantee that right, but it is because the second amendment has been distorted and is often misquoted to mislead the American people to believe that because the second amendment exists we should not and we cannot regulate the manufacture, the sale, and the distribution of guns in the United States. As a result of the notion being promulgated that we cannot regulate the sale and distribution and manufacture of guns, we have a paralysis by legislators across the country and by the Congress. Repeatedly, public opinion polls have shown that the American people do want more gun control. They want more regulation of guns. Of course, a No. 1 issue across the Nation is crime and solutions to the problem of crime. Madam Speaker, crimes of all kinds I abhor, but crime which results in the death of individuals is of particular concern and should be of particular concern to all of us. The recent tragic shootings of two young persons at Thomas Jefferson High School in New York City has renewed interest in some kind of immediate, urgent action to deal with guns and the gun culture. Madam Speaker, two young persons, one named Ian Moore and the other's name is Tyrone Sinkler, they happen to live -- they happened to live in my congressional district. The tense is important here. Thomas Jefferson School is not located in the district, but these young people resided in the 12th Congressional District. Somehow their shooting has shocked even New York City, which has too many homicides and too many guns despite the fact that we have very tight gun control laws in both New York City and New York State. The fact is that these youngsters were murdered in cold blood in a school; the fact is that the young man who pulled out the gun and shot them has no fear of being caught and no concern about snuffing out human life and taking his punishment subsequently. In addition to the two persons being shot that day, their lives being snuffed out immediately, another young person who was a friend of theirs went home and, with a gun, committed suicide, took his own life. Mr. Speaker, in the space of 5 days in New York City there were about 10 shootings. About five people were killed with guns. That is in New York City, which is highly visible. They got a lot of publicity, and all the world knows about it. But what my colleagues do not know about is that all around the country, in both rural communities and suburban communities, young people are taking their lives and taking each other's lives in large numbers. We know about the mass murders when automatic weapons are being taken into post office buildings, and people getting revenge for various reasons have snuffed out the life of dozens of people. We know about the mass murder that took place in a cafeteria where the target seemed to be primarily women. We know about these. They get a lot of publicity. What we do not know is that the statistics will show in school district after school district across the country these incidents are taking place. Mr. Speaker, I have been invited to serve as a moderator for a panel, a teleconference, entitled "Challenges in Choices, Violence in the Schools." This teleconference is sponsored by the National Association of Secondary School Principals' urban services office. It is going to take place next Wednesday. The brochure that was sent to me starts as follows: It relates to incidents where young people were murdered or young people were guilty of murdering people in schools. In Pinellas County, FL, for example, an assistant high school principal was killed and another administrator and teacher at that school injured by students who were armed with stolen revolvers. In Garden, KS, two teachers and a junior high school principal were killed by a 14-year-old boy with an automatic rifle. My colleagues did not hear any headlines about this, and there are numerous other incidents that are taking place all across the country that we do not read the headlines, we do not see them on television. They are not in New York City with the media present to publicize it, but it is happening all over, the culture of the gun, the culture of violence. It has taken hold, and this generation, which we could call the Rambo generation because they are fed by films and videos that glorify violence, the Rambo generation marches on, and [*H1169] the shock of having two young people murdered in high school is appropriate. Mr. Speaker, it means that we are one step closer to the collapse of civilization. We are one step closer to the collapse of our society. What will happen next? We will have young people carrying guns into churches and murdering people in churches. It would be another step closer to the collapse of civilization as we know it. What are we doing to protect our youth from senseless killing? What are we doing as adults? As parents? And, most important, those people who are most responsible for how our society works? What are we doing as legislators? What are we doing as congresspersons to protect our young people? Are we doing all we can do? Or are we wimpishly bowing to a gun lobby and not a committee, civilized actions, to be taken in order to control the manufacture, the sale, and distribution of guns? What is different? What is the difference between our society and other industrialized societies? Japan, or Germany, or Great Britain, or France; why is it these industrialized societies have a far lower set of casualties as a result of gun play? Why is it that it goes way, way down, the comparisons with Great Britain, and Germany and Japan? It is astonishing in terms of the number of people who have been killed by guns. These societies are able and willing to control the manufacture, distribution, and sale of guns, and this society is not. The savage, barbaric behavior of a young man who whips out a pistol and shoots dead two students in a high school is horrendous, but in responding or failing to respond the Members of Congress and any other State legislatures or city legislatures are equally as savage and equally as barbaric if they do not take steps to use their power to control the manufacture, sale, and distribution of guns. I have offered this resolution to repeal the second amendment very seriously. I do not have any illusions about the fate of the resolution in terms of its passage. I do not have any illusions about the possibility of an amendment really taking place because, even if Congress passes it, it has to go to State legislatures. That is not my goal. My goal is to raise the level of debate, accelerate the level of debate and discussion about and the need to control the sale, manufacture, and distribution of guns in our society. The democratic process often works well in the United States. The will of the people is usually carried out sooner or later by their elected legislators and officials. If they do not act to carry out the will of the people, they are going to get removed sooner or later, but not always is it sooner. Sometimes the will of even a very large majority can be thwarted by a small group of single-issue fanatics who use money and threats to intimidate elected representatives so they fail to pass legislation that the overwhelming majority of the people want. Polls have clearly shown that 75 to 85 percent of the people want some form of gun control, but we do not have gun control, except to a very limited extent, because a small group of intense gun fanatics have perverted the democratic process through threats and intimidation of any public figure who dares to speak for and vote for what the overwhelming majority of the people want. Elections never provide a clear expression of public opinion on any single issue since a vote is determined by a number of issues and also by moves and political personalities. Thus the people never send a strong, clear signal in favor of gun control because the system does not give them the opportunity. But the single issue of gun control fanatics are very clear in their message. They send a message which is very powerful in their spending big money to defeat candidates in their letter writing campaigns and their intimidation of many elected officials. Mr. Speaker, we must give the American people as a whole an opportunity to express their opinion on control and regulation of guns, especially the concealable handguns and the semiautomatics. Let us have a public debate and discussion nationwide to find out whether the people want to turn away from violence. The second amendment is unnecessary in 1992. The purpose of the second amendment is to assure the people's right to bear arms in a well-regulated militia. Nobody would dream of interfering with the use of guns by the National Guard, the Armed Forces Reserves, which is our well-regulated militia, the Armed Forces Reserves, or any local militia, or the police departments. We are not going to interfere with it, and the right of that kind of well-regulated militia is protected and understood without this amendment being in place. The second amendment has a very limited purpose and intent. It is very clear the courts have interpreted that it does not mean that we cannot control and regulate guns, the sale, the manufacture, and distribution of guns. Congress can do that. We have the power. But the second amendment has been twisted. Its purpose and intent has been distorted and perverted by gun control fanatics whose view it is that guns may not be regulated or controlled in any way, and they have fooled us, hoodwinked the American people into believing that we cannot control guns. We violate the Constitution if we do so. The secondamendment does not say anything like that, but they interpret it that way, and they have managed to convince very large numbers of intelligent people that any gun regulation is unconstitutional. Are our rights as a free people jeopardized in 1992 by a waiting period for the purchase of a handgun? Are our rights as a free people jeopardized in 1992 by a criminal investigation of purchases of guns? Are our rights as a free people jeopardized by the regulation and supervision of gun dealers? Are our rights as a free people jeopardized by severe limitations on the manufacture, import, and sale of semiautomatics and machineguns? Certainly not. But the gun fanatics tell us the Republic will be in danger if these modest measures are taken by the Congress. The Congress has the power right now. It can do what is necessary to regulate the manufacture, sale, and distribution of guns. Only Congress can have the necessary impact. It does no good for New York City to pass strict gun control laws as it has already done, or for New York State to pass strict gun control laws, as it has already done, if the guns are freely available in other States and can be transported across State lines, as they are. We have only a handful of companies in this country that manufacture guns. Their greed has pushed them to make them more and more attractive. Weapons are more streamlined, more automatic. They fire more bullets, and they are more deadly than ever before. They are smaller and cheaper. So we are pushing guns the way we sell soap at this point. Only a barbaric society would continue to push deadly weapons as if they were toys, or push deadly weapons as if they were appliances. Here in Washington we have citizens who have taken the initiative and passed an initiative which calls for liability, a gun liability law, which makes the manufacturer, the dealers, and all the people who have connections with the guns, liable when a person is injured or killed by a gun. There are people in Congress who are fighting that legislation. We need the same legislation across the country in every State and in every city. Madam Speaker, let me share some articles. I am not going to read them, but I would like for Members to read a series of articles that have appeared in the New York Times. The fourth article appeared today. These articles are about guns and the gun culture, the gun manufacturers, the gun salespeople, the proliferation of guns and what is behind them. This series of articles started in the New York Times on Sunday, March 8, and have appeared every day, March 8, March 9, March 10, and today, March 11, I urge Members and all others who want to take steps to end this barbaric failure to regulate guns to get background on the issue. Madam Speaker, the CRS, the Congressional Research Service, has also [*H1170] put out extensive information on public opinion with respect to gun control, as well as gun control regulations. When I asked for material from CRS I was delighted to hear that many Members of Congress have requested the same kind of information, and therefore they have the information readily available. So I would hope that those Members who are interested and have gotten the information will join me in offering this resolution to repeal the second amendment. I hope also we will take whatever steps are necessary long before the second amendment finds its way onto the floor of Congress to end the savage and barbaric proliferation of guns in our society. Madam Speaker, I cannot stress too much the accusation that I am making, and that is that we are behaving in a barbaric and savage fashion when we have the power to regulate guns and we refuse to use that power. Madam Speaker, I would like to call attention to an editorial that appeared in New York Newsday as a reaction of my announcement that I would introduce a resolution to repeal the second amendment. Madam Speaker, it is entitled "Good Instinct, Wrong Policy: Don't Touch the Bill of Rights." It read as follows: GOOD INSTINCT, WRONG POLICY -- DON'T TOUCH THE BILL OF RIGHTS U.S. Rep. Major Owens is so disturbed by the violence racking his Brooklyn district that he's drafting a resolution that would seek to repeal the Second Amendment -- the section of the Bill of Rights that says: "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It's hard to blame Owens for wanting to take drastic action. Since November, three students have been shot to death in the halls of Thomas Jefferson High School in East New York. Homicides in the neighborhood's 75th Precinct, one of the city's most violent, are running ahead of last year's numbers. Still, Owens is misguided as he works to drag the Second Amendment into the cross-hairs. To the gun lobby, it's an article of faith that the Second Amendment guarantees all Americans an absolute right to pack heat. But the gun lobby -- led by the deep-pockets National Rifle Association -- is wrong. In 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the amendment does not prohibit the feds from controlling firearms. The court over the years has been more than willing to stick with that wisdom. What's more, says Dennis Hengian, director of the Legal Action Project for the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, the court has never found that the Second Amendment even applies to the states. So why was the amendment written? Legal scholars say it was drafted to protect citizens from abuses by a large standing army. Before the revolution, the king's troops were sometimes quartered in civilian homes -- to the distress of citizens. But because the local militias had been disarmed, citizens had no choice but to comply. The amendment was meant as a guarantee to citizens that such abuses could not happen again. By "militia," the gun crowd insists, drafters of the Bill of Rights meant a university armed people, not a specific group. But the Supreme Court has rejected that view. And no less a conservative than former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger has explained: "It's the simplest thing: a well-regulated militia. If the militia -- which is what we now call the National Guard, essentially -- has to be well-regulated, in heaven's name why shouldn't we regulate 14-, 15-, 16-year-old kids having handguns or hoodlums having machine guns? If nothing else, says Owens, perhaps his resolution will start a useful discussion about the urgent need for stronger gun-control laws. Maybe so. But Congress doesn't need a constitutional amendment to act. It needs a little more backbone in the face of a strident and well-oiled lobbying machine. Madam Speaker, I welcome the criticism of the New York Newsday editorial, because they have done exactly what I wanted to happen: They have escalated the debate and made the debate more visible. I urge all Members to follow the debate, to follow the kind of reaction which some newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, have had to the recent outbreak of violence in New York City, and, of course, similar violence which has taken place across the country. Madam Speaker, the Wall Street Journal had an article on gun manufacturers showing that 65 percent of the guns in the country come from two manufacturers. I think, Madam Speaker, they are based in California. The series in the New York Times goes further and talks about the entire gun culture, including the fact that we allow films and movies to be promulgated in large numbers which glorify violence. Congress has gotten very excited and allowed itself in many cases to be stampeded on the issues of pornography. We have been quite quiet on violence. There are films which promulgate and glorify violence to no end. "Rambo" and the series of Rambo films probably represents the greatest depth to which profit-hungry Hollywood producers have gone to tap their desire for more violent films. Our children have been raised on this on television. We have not sought to control the violence on television in any way. There are some countries in this hemisphere who will not allow American films to be shown because they are violent and because they want to control what their youths see with respect to violence. We at this point are not the only industrialized nation that lacks gun control, but we are among the few. Most nations that are industrialized do have tight control over the manufacture, sale, and distribution of guns. Madam Speaker, I hope that in the coming weeks and months we will reconsider our position. We have a crime bill that is being negotiated in conference now. That crime bill takes only very timid steps. If you add the Brady amendment, as I understand has been accomplished, the Brady amendment that we passed, the Brady bill that was passed in the House of Representatives, as part of the discussion in that conference, even if you add that bill it is only a timid, small step taken toward the regulation of guns. Madam Speaker, that bill is obsessed with the death penalty. It adds many, many Federal requirements that the death penalty be imposed for crimes totally out of step with what reality has shown. The death penalty has not reduced violence or crimes at all. The States which have executed the most people since the Supreme Court allowed the renewal of punishment by death, those States have the highest crime rates, and they are escalating. The homicide rates are increasing. So the death penalty is not going to solve the problem. Gun control is a practical way to deal with the most lethal weapon in the crime culture. If we can stop the slaughter of the innocents, we will have taken a great step forward in protecting our people. It is our duty to do that. We should stop acting barbaric. We should stop acting savage. We should accept our responsibilities and do the civilized thing, foster and promote laws which control the sale, distribution, and manufacture of guns. We can do no more for people like Ian Moore and the other three youngsters, two youngsters who died on the same day. There is a long list. We could recite them on the floor of this House, and maybe it would be good to recite a list of all the young people who have died in the last few years from gunshot wounds. It might bring us to our senses. We are not protecting our children. Any civilization that cannot protect its children does not deserve to be called a civilization. I hope we will remember that.