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May 17, 2023 By Michael Weymouth

As gun violence continues unabated in our country, it has become clear that the Republican Party has no intention of doing anything about it, short of offering thoughts and prayers to the victims families. That and a plethora of useless bromides such as the only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

The roots of the modern gun debate go back to the 1963, Kennedy assassination, when Democratic senator Thomas Dodd from Connecticut introduced legislation restricting the sale of mail order rifles. Shortly thereafter President Lyndon Johnson signed the Gun Control Act of 1968, and in 1994 President Bill Clinton signed the Assault Weapons Ban, which lasted ten years. It was allowed to expire under President George W. Bush. As a result, 20 million assault weapons are now in the hands of American gun owners.

It is clear that the Democratic Party has done its best to limit the sales of assault weapons, as well as to legislate common sense gun laws, while the Republican Party has done nothing but oppose them.

It hasnt always been this way.

In fact, two of the icons of the Republican Party actually held opinions about gun control that were diametrically opposed to positions held by todays Republican Party.

Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Nixon SCOTUS appointee said of the Second amendment, The gun lobbys interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American people by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies-the militia-would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.

One can hardly imagine that opinion coming from todays Supreme Court, which has adhered to a much narrower interpretation of the Second Amendment. Compare the Courts recent ruling that allowed New York citizens to openly carry guns, to comments made by President Ronald Reagan in 1967: There is absolutely no reason why out on the street today a civilian should be carrying a loaded weapon.

Burgers and Reagans comments beg the question: what happened to the Republican Party?

The answer is the NRA and its 5 million members, most of whom vote solid Republican, and, as Burger pointed out, the gun industrys lobby, which contributes millions of dollars to Republican politicians each year. The result is a constant Republican drumbeat that Democrats want to take away all guns. This is total hogwash.

In the meantime, American children fear going to school and their parents fear they will never see them again as their kids board the school bus in the morning.

Todays Republican Party has a lot to answer for and hopefully they will wake up to the damage they have done by failing to deal with this important issue. A good start will be for every American voter to condition his or her vote on how committed a candidate is to revisiting the Second Amendment and how it might be amended to better serve and protect the American people.

There should be no greater motivation than the fact that there have already been 202 mass shootings in 2023, more than one a day.

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Opinion: The Second Amendment Fraud - Hingham Anchor