By John Lindstrom
Publisher
Posted: August 8, 2019 4:04 PM

There was a little girl, no more than five, sitting on a stool intently watching what looked like a Disney movie on an iPad while her parents were just as intently listening to a gun dealer instruct them how to convert the semi-automatic rifle they were buying into a fully automatic weapon.

That happened at a gun show several years ago in Oakland County this reporter attended out of sheer curiosity. It was something brought back to mind this week. It's brought back to mind when there is a mass shooting, which sadly means in the three-plus years since that show I have thought of it often.

I'm well familiar with guns. I have no basic objection to guns. There have been times when things got a little odd in my different neighborhoods where I debated having a weapon and consulted with cops and gun experts I knew on what to buy (they all said forget about a pistol, get a pump-action shotgun. "You'll hit everything with that," one said to me).

We come again, yet again, to the question of what we can do to stifle if not end casual mass slaughter, since pleas to embrace and love all humanity fail. We again have to decide whether we will even debate the question in a way that leads to some action.

Because we haven't ever gotten to the point of deciding whether we should do something. For all the locations we can roll easily off the tongue – Columbine, Atlanta, Aurora, Wedgewood Baptist, Sikh Temple, the Navy Yards, Fort Hood, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Orlando, Virginia Tech, Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Pittsburgh, now El Paso and Dayton and of course Kalamazoo – have we done anything?

People say focus on mental health. Okay, the mental health community in this state and in the nation won't argue in one way with that. Mental health care has always been the afterthought in the health care debate, so by all means take on mental health. There is one type of gun violence we likely could reduce if more attention were paid to mental health, and that is suicide. Mass shootings, well the research seems less definitive on how effective that would be.

Attack video games? Really? Not to be churlish, but the Japanese spend far more per capita on video games than we do and how many mass shootings have they had? Of course, if their rules on gun ownership were the same as ours … ah, yes, the vexed question.

It is well established owning guns is a constitutional right. The U.S. Supreme Court held it was and held it was not connected to the militia provision in the 2nd Amendment, in its controversial D.C. v. Heller decision of 2008.

But what else did the court say in that decision? Let the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority decision, tell us:

"Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the

question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues," Mr. Scalia said.

"Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms," he continued.

"We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those 'in common use at the time. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of 'dangerous and unusual weapons.' It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service — M-16 rifles and the like — may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment's ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty," Mr. Scalia said.

The Legislature has before it a number of bills dealing with what are called red flag laws, HB 4283, HB 4284, HB 4285, SB 156, SB 157 and SB 158. It is completely up to the Legislature whether it will or not deal with those bills. It seems Mr. Scalia, though, has laid out the legal standards permitting action on the bills should the Legislature choose to do so.

One other thing about the gun show that has stuck with this reporter: it was strictly forbidden to carry a loaded weapon into the show. You had to surrender any weapon you had to several nice older ladies who ensured they were unloaded before entering. I've always wondered what the gun show organizer understood that we somehow do not understand.