The shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, immediately prompted renewed calls for gun control from President Joe Biden and others. As I have previously written, these calls often appear entirely disconnected from the actual crime or the constitutional protections afforded gun owners, including President Biden demanding a ban on assault weapons after a shooting with a handgun.
President Biden’s call for greater background checks and enforcement was a bit incongruous after he pardoned his own son on gun charges. More importantly, the Wisconsin case only highlighted why these standard demands for gun control would not have impacted that case.
This was a juvenile who is believed to have used a 9mm handgun in the attack. Natalie Rupnow, 15, was not supposed to have a gun and would not have gone through background checks. While both Biden and Kamala Harris have raised limiting or banning the popular 9mm, Harris admits that she is one of millions with the weapon and it would not be subject to any of these proposals.
The president once again denounced the availability of what he collectively calls “assault weapons,” a common reference to such popular models as the AR-15. Efforts to ban this model have already failed in the courts on constitutional grounds, though litigation is continuing on that issue.
In 2008, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment as encompassing an individual right to bear arms. The Supreme Court further strengthened the right in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen.
The AR-15 is the most popular gun in America and the number is continuing to rise rapidly, with one AR-15 purchased in every five new firearms sales. These AR-15s clearly are not being purchased for armored deer. Many are purchased for personal and home protection; it also is popular for target shooting and hunting. Many gun owners like the AR-15 because it is modular; depending on the model, you can swap out barrels, bolts and high-capacity magazines, or add a variety of accessories. While it does more damage than a typical handgun, it is not the most powerful gun sold in terms of caliber; many guns have equal or greater calibre.
That is why laws to ban or curtail sales of the AR-15 run into constitutional barriers. Even the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a California ban on adults under 21 purchasing semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15.
After past tragedies, some of us have cautioned that there is a limited range of options for gun bans, given constitutional protections. There also are practical barriers, with an estimated 393 million guns in the United States and an estimated 72 million gun owners; three out of ten Americans say they have guns. Indeed, gun ownership rose during the pandemic. When former Texas congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke declared, “Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15,” he was widely celebrated on the left. However, even seizing that one type of gun would require confiscation of as many as 15 million weapons.
These calls for greater gun controls remain either factually ambiguous or legally dubious. For example, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe declared after the Wisconsin shooting that it is time to “change the context of gun ownership.” While admitting that he did not know all of the facts, McCabe said:
We’re [going] nowhere because it keeps happening. We know it’s going to happen again. It’s happening today. It’s going to happen again in the near future. I can guarantee you that and every time it happens, we do just about nothing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can’t do. We could do things. We could — we could support and enact legislation that changes the — the — the context of gun ownership in this country and emphasizes gun safety and responsibility with the firearms that you own and keeping them out of the hands of children and doing — and really vigorous, consistent background checks across the country. We could stop selling people — stop — you — eliminate the ability to purchase guns without a background check.
It is unclear what “changing the context” means, particularly when the context is first and foremost constitutional.
Likewise, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) called for his House colleagues to “stand up to gun manufacturers” but stopped short of explaining what that would actually mean:
Pocan has previously called for “common sense” laws without tackling the more difficult question of how to produce the sweeping changes given the narrow scope of constitutional limits for an individual right.
Wisconsin has robust gun control laws that did not prevent this shooting because Rupnow was not subject to the background checks and other regulations. She was not supposed to have the weapon and 9mm is not one of the guns that Democrats are calling to ban.
None of this means that people of good faith should not work on new initiatives and measures to combat gun violence. However, politicians like President Biden have misled the public for years about the narrow range of constitutional options for gun control legislation. The suggestion is that “this did not have to happen” despite the fact that none of these proposals would have stopped this from happening.
In a tragedy of this magnitude, our leaders have a duty, first and foremost, of honesty in speaking with the public.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
There are already laws prohibiting minors from having access to guns, unsupervised. There are child access prevention and safe storage laws. Murder is also illegal. Discharging a gun in a residential neighborhood is illegal. Firing a gun on school property is illegal. It’s also illegal to fire a gun within 40 rods of any property owned by a municipality. I was unfamiliar with the unit of length called a “rod”, but it looks like it’s 16.5 feet.
https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/167/31/2/a
Schools in Wisconsin are also gun-free zones:
https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/948/605
There were already laws in Wisconsin against every step in this shooting.
What I cannot understand is why the public supported armed security at banks, airports, the county recorder’s office, primaries, embassies, and for other public places, yet they vehemently fight tooth and nail against similar armed security at schools. Clearly, domestic terrorism against children makes an unstable element feel powerful, and the internet quickly spreads infamy. It’s as inevitable as terrorists trying to hijack or bring down planes necessitating intense security measures. There is no widespread resistance to airport security, because people want to live in a world where airport security isn’t necessary. Everyone accepts that it is, and takes off their shoes to be scanned at the airport. Why in the world is there such effective resistance to protecting children in schools? There is nothing more precious, and yet documents at the local county recorder’s office have more security.
Instead, schools all go into lockdown if there is a threat, which holds students captive in easily breathable rooms, while the shooter can just go from room to room.
If Joe sees no problem with crackheads illegally buying guns, then why did he increase the penalty for Hunter’s crime by 50%?
He’s like a robot. If you have a ‘tickle’ in your throat, you cough. If there’s a shooting, you call for gun control. Maybe a little more control over the person who pulled the trigger would help. Unfortunately, not in the minds of left-wing liberals!
I agree with the professor’s comments. He is right on target, pun intended.
The knee-jerk reaction from Biden just hours after a very mentally unhinged 15 year old teenage girl pulled out a handgun and shot a teacher and another student, is disturbing and concerning. It shows a lack of seriousness about what led this young girl to commit her violence, calling it ‘gun violence.’
Aren’t we all getting a bit sick of hearing the term ‘gun violence?’
We never hear the term ‘knife violence,’ ‘baseball bat violence,’ ‘vehicle violence’,’bow and arrow’ violence’ —-it’s just the firearm that discharges a projectile at extremely high speed that gets the ‘violence’ terminology attached to it —
And here I thought that an AR-15 was a pickup truck.
Silly me…
J
* Perhaps a rereading of Proverbs would be a response.
Raised up right and raised upright is a Proverb btw. Joe might have read that instead.
* Proverbs 22:6
Condolences to those lost lives and Samantha RIP
OT but just curious, why is the president of the NCAA a first class a’h0le who hates women and wants them to be violated in every way possible, not to mention a lying pathetic scumbag?
I’m angry that female athletes today are threatened and told to be quiet and keep sweet, if they say they feel unsafe with a male in their locker rooms and showers. They’re supposed to cheer as biological males take spots on women’s teams, break records, and win awards and scholarships.
We essentially have men’s sports, and coed sports.
My gender is not a state of mind.
Participating in any particular sports is not a human right. I’m terrible as basketball, and I’m over 50. I don’t have the right to a spot on the WNBA. I don’t have the right to participate in U12 soccer with kids. I certainly don’t have the right to play with an NFL men’s team, where I’d survive about 1.5 seconds.
It’s appalling that Title IX sports was created to provide opportunities for female athletes, yet the Biden administration is trying to twist it to force women to accept males in women’s sports.
* The answer is obvious. Would you arm prison inmates?
It’s an absent core belief in immutable laws. Immutable laws are referred to as “morals”. Morals are inviolable.
Since the culture is without morals its foolish to arm them. Prison inmates have been armed, euphemism.
Be careful, storm doors and bars on windows, stay in after dark , keep your children home.
Since the assassination of the United CEO, other health insurance executives are apparently afraid to go to the office.
Now they know how our kids feel about going to school.
No big deal.
Just get them bullet-proof backpacks and have them do active shooter drills at work.
Problem solved !!!!
Maybe just have one door in and out of their office buildings.
These issues are easily solved.
Apparently killing kids at school is OK, just don’t shoot the health CEO’s.
Health CEOs living in fear is just the thing I need to warm my heart for the holidays.
GFY
Health CEOs living in fear is just the thing I need to warm my heart for the holidays.
That and female murderous Democrat Alphabet Sex Pride Tribe Trannies murdering little Christian kiddies in schools, of course.
You’ll always have Audrey Hale and Nashville, sweetie! Say her name!
(BTW, when does it become permissible for somebody to warm their heart by killing the Godfather of today’s Obamacare Health CEO’s: Bolshevik Barack?)
Apparently killing kids at school is OK, just don’t shoot the health CEO’s.
If female Woke Democrat Alphabet Sex Pride Tribe Trannies murder little kids in schools, Democrats like Joe Biden are DEFINITELY okay with that.
Say your murderous Tranny’s name, commie: Audrey Hale
Now they know how our kids feel about going to school.
Try this instead you Anonymous Democrat New Hitler Youth member: Now they know how we genocidal neo-Nazis make Jewish students feel in our universities here in America
Old Airborne Dog
I mentioned the apparent correlation between mass killings and SSRI antidepressants below.
I have since found a much more comprehensive comment on the risks.
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-evidence-ssri-antidepressants
They’re for short term use. 3 to 6 months. Most definitely affect the emotional component of the brain. They can lead to misapprehension or confusion of emotional responses to stimuli such as laughing at deadly accidents. They limit the brains highs and lows in emotional responses. Most odd…
Dems don’t really care about people using guns to murder people. They lamented that the Trump assassin missed and they celebrated that a CEO of a corporation was murdered with a gun. Their gun control advocacy is insincere. They just want certain people to be murdered with guns and not others. They can’t be taken seriously. They are not legitimate.
* Just disassemble the guns, rifles and sell on eBay. Heck, Smith and Wesson vintage 38 trigger mechanism maybe 15 dollars.
When you hear a politician calling for “common sense gun laws”, you know it’s almost certainly one of professor Turley’s fellow Democrat lawyers using code words to demand nationwide gun confiscation, shredding the Second Amendment for the emotional political value.
In this case Professor Turley’s fellow Democrat lawyers: Biden, Harris, Schumer – and all the elected Democrats running the blood soaked utopian gun banning Democrat states like Maryland, Illinois – and the prize of them all, Washington DC.
There’s a reason Soviet Democrats like the Brown Vagina qualified Vice President DEI Hire (yes, another of Professor Turley’s fellow Democrat lawyers) refused to campaign on a promise to sensibly “buy back” aka confiscate all Evil Baby Killer Assault Weapon semiautomatic AR-15 rifles.
“Common sense gun laws” is just another semantics emotional political play like “undocumented migrants” for Illegal Aliens.
They know they can’t get firearms confiscation by promising that confiscation at the ballet box. So they will instead plot to get it by packing SCOTUS and getting it by legislation from the SCOTUS bench.
Old Airborne Dog
“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Senator Richard Blumenthal.
@Professor Turley: These AR-15s clearly are not being purchased for armored deer.
Professor, you aren’t viciously trolling your dear, dear friend Dennis McIntyre with that remark to get back at him for his daily insults toward you?
The Soviet Democrats’/Dennis McIntyre’s favorite attack line against The Baby Killer Assault Weapon AR-15: A hunter using an AR-15 to hunt with would TOTALLY destroy a deer!
My guess, Professor Turley is that both you and your good friend Dennis McIntyre are both victims of a lifetime of biases and a complete lack of knowledge when the subject matter is any kind of firearms and their use.
(If you have some amusement time tonight, look up how many mainstream American ammunition companies specifically manufacture deer hunting ammunition for use in an AR-15 to hunt deer. In a free market forces economy, they wouldn’t be making that amount of hunting ammunition if Americans weren’t using that rifle to hunt deer – they don’t get Democrat government subsidies like Green Energy does)
Old Airborne Dog
Democrat Rule #1: never actually abolish anything you can use for fundraising.
Two separate and distinct points exist in the 2nd Amendment. The first justifies the second:
– A well regulated militia is necessary to oppose the unnatural and irrational forces of tyrannical communism.
– The right of Americans to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
____________________________________________________________________________
2nd Amendment
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.
Two separate and distinct points exist in the 2nd Amendment. The first justifies the second:
Another totally unique Constitutional interpretation from George.
Confederate Kluxxer George, who on the one hand every week proclaims that the ancestors of black slaves born in America do NOT HAVE birthright citizenship that allows them to run for president.
And then just today Commie Democrat George claims that if Trump acts to end birthright citizenship, he is doing so on some weird legal theory.
So when it comes to the Second Amendment, we get the analysis of Commie Democrat George. Imagine that!
@George: what you present as your version of constitutional theory and logic looks like a puzzle put together by a group of two year old toddlers.
Old Airborne Dog
* if the feds go under a State could be attacked by another State. “..a free STATE…” a militia is created by assembling the armed citizenry.
This was a long time past. It’ll work today.