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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (5097)	7/17/2001 6:59:06 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

He didn't attack it with "something not relevant to it." He didn't attack it with ANYTHING!

To: TimF who wrote (5097)	7/18/2001 12:42:34 AM
From: ManyMoose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

My position is, if the weapon has a lawful individual use, then it's protected. None of these do, so they're not protected. Are hand grenades, a heavy machine guns, or rocket propelled grenade launcher, arms that we have a right to own? Perhaps but there is some uncertainty on that question, and I for one will not lead the push to deregulate them. They are not clearly protected by the amendment.

To: TimF who wrote (5097)	7/18/2001 10:34:48 AM
From: Don Hurst	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93284

From today's NY Times....Our government, Barr and NRA against any UN efforts to control arms flow and Feinstein thinks international trafficking in shoulder mounted missile launchers should be controlled. What is wrong with this woman??? Today our right to shoulder mounted missile launchers, tomorrow..."suitacase" nukes. Heston needs to talk to our man in the Oval Office!!! He should threaten a plague of locusts to make sure our government does not support world arms control. After all the Second Amendment was found in a burning bush! nytimes.com July 18, 2001 Senator Says Most Americans Want Controls on Light Arms By BARBARA CROSSETTE NITED NATIONS, July 17 — Senator Dianne Feinstein said today that a majority of Americans would not approve of efforts by the United States to derail the talks here on an international agreement to tighten controls on light weapons. Senator Feinstein, a California Democrat, is part of an American delegation to a conference on small arms here. She also said in a telephone interview from Washington that the American gun lobby was presenting other nations with a distorted view of American opinion on gun control. The United States, with both a large gun industry and sound gun- registration laws, should be leading the way in demanding better marking and tracing of weapons worldwide, not trying to block such moves, she said. Many of the 189 member nations represented here want an agreement that would make tracking small arms — from pistols to grenades and light missiles — easier and more reliable. They would also like at least an admonition against the unrestricted sales of weapons to civilians. In a Senate speech on Monday and in the interview today, Senator Feinstein took strong exception to the perception created by Bush administration officials and their supporters here that Americans fear that the United Nations is threatening their right to own guns. On Monday, Representative Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican and member of the National Rifle Association board, said the United Nations should limit itself to stopping the flow of illegal guns into areas of conflict, or it would risk alienating Congress and would put future payments in jeopardy. Congress still owes $582 million it agreed to pay the United Nations to pay part of the back dues the United States owes. By United Nations calculations, the United States now owes the organization more than $1.9 billion. "I do not believe that Mr. Barr speaks for a majority of the American people," Ms. Feinstein said today. "I believe he speaks from the National Rifle Association perspective. He certainly doesn't speak for California. It's now well established that Californians want controls on weapons. California has 34 million people — this isn't a peanut of a state." She said that she, and her constituents, would support a treaty that called for international tracing of weapons and openness in gun sales. "So much of the legal sales appear to go into the black market that this transparency becomes extraordinarily important," she said. "There have been too many people killed by these arms." In her Senate speech on Monday, Ms. Feinstein questioned the Bush administration's position opposing international agreements on the grounds that they could constrain legal American arms sales, which are well policed. "There is good evidence of an increased incidence of U.S.-manufactured weapons, legally manufactured and legally traded or transferred, flowing into the international black market," she said. In 1999, the United States licensed more than $470 million in light weapons for export. The United Nations estimates that there are about 500 million illegally acquired guns and light weapons of other kinds in circulation around the world. Ms. Feinstein said that last year and so far this year, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had received more than 19,000 requests from foreign countries to trace guns used in crimes; 8,000 of them had originally been sold legally in the United States. She also challenged the frequently repeated assertions by American officials here that the Second Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed individuals the right to own guns. "Mr. Bolton's position on the Second Amendment is in direct contradiction to decades of Supreme Court precedent," she said. "Not one single gun-control law has ever been overturned by the court on Second Amendment grounds." Ms. Feinstein said that the last attempt to claim constitutional protection for carrying a gun was in 1939, when a man arrested for taking a sawed-off shotgun across state lines lost his request to have the case dismissed by the Supreme Court. "If a sawed-off shotgun is not protected by the Second Amendment," she said in the Senate, "why does the administration seem to be taking the position that the Second Amendment protects the international trafficking of shoulder-launched missiles?"