PA Bill Number: SB1198

Title: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and ...

Description: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and .. ...

Last Action: Referred to AGRICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS

Last Action Date: May 17, 2024

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Scottish journalist says Second Amendment should be repealed :: 06/25/2015

Writing yesterday in The Scotsman, journalist Allan Massie – a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature – contended that not only has the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment been misread, it should also be repealed.

His diatribe, headlined “Problem is gun control, not racism,” ostensibly is about the Charleston tragedy, but instead of focusing on the act of the 21-year-old suspect now charged with the mass shooting, Massie turns his attention to gun rights. In the process, he perpetuates an oft-repeated myth that there is an absence of gun control in this country “which allows an inadequate and unbalanced young man like Dylann Roof to obtain a firearm, no questions asked.”

If published reports are accurate, Roof bought a handgun at a commercial gun store in South Carolina a couple of months ago. It was a legal purchase, which – contrary to the false impression created by Massie’s piece – requires filling out a federal Form 4473 that asks a series of questions, and includes a background check. That’s hardly a “no questions asked” scenario.

If one wishes to discuss “no questions asked” firearms transactions, one would have to chat with authorities in Worcester, Massachusetts. This Saturday, according to the Worcester Telegram, there will be “another gun buyback program from 9 a.m. to noon,” which – if the prices are correct, seems like something of a rip-off.

In Worcester, they’re offering grocery gift cards at the following rate: “$25 for an unwanted long gun, or rifle; $50 for a pistol or revolver; and $75 for an automatic or semi-automatic weapon.” If only one could find such bargains at the Washington Arms Collectors gun show, which will also be held this weekend, at the Puyallup fairgrounds.

Aside from the fact that the very title of the Massachusetts endeavor is a falsehood – it’s not a “buyback” at all because the government never owned those firearms in the first place – the suggestion that it might avert a tragedy or crime may be somewhat off the mark, since criminals don’t sell their guns for chump change. And forget about solving any crimes; “It’s a-no-questions-asked program,” the newspaper acknowledges.

Scotsman Massie considers gun control this country’s “most urgent problem.” He says “America’s love affair with the gun…is the 21st century’s ‘peculiar institution’, one based on a misreading of the second amendment (sic) to the constitution relating to the right to bear arms. Even if this is not, as some maintain, a misreading, amendments can be repealed, and this one should be.”

And then he adds a sneering swipe that might cause some rises in blood pressure in Fairfax, Virginia, where the National Rifle Association is headquartered. “No doubt the influence of the National Rifle Association will be brought to bear to prevent this,” Massie suggested about a repeal effort, “evidence that the NRA is a more dangerous organisation than the Ku Klux Klan.”

Massie might take a lesson from another writer, Jacob Sullum, who explained in a column published at Town Hall this morning why gun control laws pushed in response to such crimes as Charleston or Sandy Hook simply don’t work. In particular, Sullum singled out the so-called “universal background check.”

“In short,” he wrote, "’universal background checks’ make no sense as a response to the Charleston attack. Then again, universal background checks made no sense as a response to the Sandy Hook massacre, the perpetrator of which used a rifle legally purchased by his mother and in any case did not have the sort of criminal or psychiatric record that would have legally barred him from buying a gun on his own.”

As this column has repeatedly noted, most of the mass shooters in recent history have passed background checks and complied with other gun control laws. Santa Barbara spree killer Elliot Rodger also endured ten-day waiting periods and used California-compliant ten-round magazines, and he killed three of his victims by fatally stabbing them.

Massie might also take a hint from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who put it bluntly to MSNBC yesterday: “Anytime there’s a traumatic situation, people want something to blame, they always want something to go after. There is one person to blame here. A person filled with hate, a person that does not define South Carolina. And we are going to focus on that one person.”