NRA Gives Gun Control Group An "F" In History And Civics

NRA urges journalists to do a little homework before attending HCI's "class." (WASHINGTON, DC) -- James Jay Baker, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, commented on a National Press Club event scheduled for Wednesday sponsored by Handgun Control Inc's Center to Prevent Handgun Violence. "If past is precedent, HCI will be doing its best to earn itself an ‘F' in the history and civics of the U.S. Constitution," said Baker. "As part of the group's on-going assault on the rights of law-abiding citizens, they ignore a mountain of scholarly research to argue that the Second Amendment protects something other than an individual right. Using a panel of four professors and two representatives of anti-gun organizations to suggest that ‘scholars' support the collective right interpretation is farcical and flies in the face of the nation's most prestigious constitutional experts such as Lawrence Tribe, Akhil Reed Amar, William Van Alstyne, and Sanford Levinson." In the last decade, in response to questions about the Second Amendment raised by gun ban groups and their followers, dozens of law review articles have been written by the nation's foremost Constitutional scholars and historians. Among these, all but a few, and those in minor publications, support the traditional understanding of the right to arms as an individual right protected by the Constitution. University of Tennessee's Glenn Harlan Reynolds summed it up by saying that scholars adhering to an individual rights interpretation, "dominate the academic literature on the Second Amendment almost completely," and the verdict that the Second Amendment is an individual right is "the mainstream scholarly interpretation." Nicholas Johnson of Fordham University Law School, Nelson Lund of George Mason Law School, Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law School, Joyce Lee Malcolm of Bentley College, and Glenn Harlan Reynolds of the University of Tennessee are available for interviews with the news media to discuss the history and the "Standard Model" interpretation of the Second Amendment by calling NRA Public Affairs.

For more information, see NRA's amicus brief in U.S. v. Emerson and a bibliography of more than 125 published books, law reviews, and essays on the Second Amendmentas an individual right.

Also, see Madison and the Bill of Rights, Virginia's Great Dissenters, Our Second Amendment: The Original Perspective, The Bill of Rights and the States, America's Founding Fathers on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, A Liberal Democrat's lament, "Showdown!" at linguafranca.com, and Lost Battles, Lost Rights.

Other resources include www.gunscholar.org.