Lethal Passage_ The Story of a Gun - Erik Larson [102]
The lack of a uniform system of federal regulations allows traffickers to shop jurisdictions for the easiest commercial conditions. When South Carolina instituted its one-gun-a-month law, for example, Virginia became the number one source of crime guns found in the Northeast. Early in 1993, Virginia passed its own one-a-month law. Although the new law’s impact was not immediately apparent, it seemed certain to reduce the traffickers’ interest in Virginia. The trafficking will not stop, however. Just as many guns will make their way to the bad guys as ever before. The East Coast buyers will simply spend their money elsewhere, most likely Georgia, Ohio, and West Virginia.
That the nation needs a detailed, uniform code of firearms regulations ought to be, by now, beyond rational dispute. The fact is, many states have already passed firearms regulations far stricter than anything Congress has ever seriously debated. As of 1989, for example, twenty states already required that consumers first get some kind of license or purchase permit before acquiring a handgun; nineteen had a handgun waiting period ranging from forty-eight hours to up to six months.
The Second Amendment certainly poses no obstacle, despite the NRA’s rhetoric. As written in the Constitution, the full amendment reads: “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.” The amendment may indeed guarantee individuals the right to bear arms. Then again, it may not. At this point, only a definitive ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court can resolve the matter. I for one remain intrigued by the “well-regulated” portion, which the NRA omitted when it displayed the rest of the amendment on the front of its Washington, D.C., headquarters. One gun-camp scholar has gone so far as to suggest that “well-regulated” means equipped with rifles that shoot straight. In his book, The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? David Kopel argues that “in firearms parlance ‘regulating’ a gun means adjusting it so that successive shots hit as close together as possible.” He writes that “ ‘regulated’ was an exhortation to competence, not an invitation to bureaucracy.” His conclusion, one he describes as “plausible,” is that a “well-regulated militia” meant “an effective citizen militia whose members hit their targets.” Kopel presents this notion three hundred pages into a detailed, heavily footnoted volume published by the Cato Institute that on first read may seem unbiased and almost scholarly. It is always important, however, to read anything on the gun debate carefully with an eye to capturing distortion and undisclosed bias. Kopel raises his true flag on page 152 where he cites research by “criminologist Paul Blackman.” Blackman may indeed be considered a criminologist in some circles, but he is also the NRA’s director of research. And Kopel, as I later found, is an NRA activist: and gun columnist. Nowhere, I might add, did the book divulge Kopel’s true identity.
I happen to side with established constitutional scholars who believe the document was designed to be applied at any time in the future with full relevance and authority to accommodate even such once-inconceivable developments as women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery. I cannot help but wonder how James Madison would react upon reading a week’s worth of the Metro section of the New York