Blunderbuss Scholarship: Perverting the Original Intent and Plain Meaning of the Second Amendment
![handle is hein.journals/ublr32 and id is 133 raw text is: BLUNDERBUSS SCHOLARSHIP: PERVERTING THE
ORIGINAL INTENT AND PLAIN MEANING OF THE
SECOND AMENDMENT
Kenneth Lassont
[Elfforts to undermine the Second Amendment, to deride it and degrade it
... threaten not only the physical well-being of millions of Americans but also
the core concept of individual liberty our founding fathers struggled to perfect
and protect.
- Charleton Heston1
[The Second Amendment] has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of
frauds, and I repeat the word 'fraud, on the American public by special inter-
est groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.
- Warren Burger2
I. INTRODUCTION
In America, guns have long evoked passions on all sides - from the
revolutionary ardor of the Founding Fathers to the libertarian im-
pulses of modern-day citizens, from gun-control advocates pursuing
the limitation of violence both criminal and unintended, to the indig-
nant fervor motivating the primary proponent of an individual's right
to bear arms, the National Rifle Association. Regardless of one's per-
spective, however, there is no escaping the serious controversy and
consequences of gun ownership.
The statistical ledger is staggering. A handgun is manufactured
every twenty seconds in the United States.3 In a population of some
260 million, there are about 222 million firearms in circulation. Some-
one is injured or killed by a handgun every twenty seconds. Thirteen
children are struck by bullets every day.4 Between the gun massacre at
Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 and March 2001, there
were some twenty school shootings or attempted shootings around
t Professor of Law, University of Baltimore. Many thanks to my research
assistant, Carl Zacarias (a graduate of the University of Baltimore School of
Law), for his hard work and diligent contributions to this article.
1. President of the National Rifle Association. See SAN FRANcIsco EXAM'R,
Sept.12, 1997, at A-11.
2. Former Chief Justice, United States Supreme Court. The MacNeil/Lehrer
News Hour: First Freedoms (Television Broadcast, Dec. 16, 1991).
3. Andrew D. Herz, Gun Crazy: Constitutional False Consciousness and Dereliction
of Dialogic Responsibility, 75 B.U. L. REv. 57, 59 (1995).
4. Id. at 59-60.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ublr32&div=11&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Blunderbuss Scholarship: Perverting the Original Intent and Plain Meaning of the Second Amendment
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