Let's not postpone article 34
Bijan Afshartous
Town meeting members are considered leaders of their precincts. Considering the huge number of people who are injured or killed by guns town meeting should show leadership in passing article 34.
If you want to convince every resident about gun issues, nothing will happen.
Bijan Afshartous, PCT 2
Sent from my iPhone
Elaine Ashton
I’m also very concerned that, due to the symbolism, this will draw an enormous amount of attention to Lexington and to each of us, which is something that I’m extremely unenthusiastic about.
Elaine
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Paul Chernick
Sent from my iPhone, please excuse typos & terseness.
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Elaine Ashton
> On Mar 10, 2016, at 6:06 PM, Paul Chernick <paul.c...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Elaine, are you worried that the NRA will send toddlers with AK47s to shoot us all?
Elaine
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Rotberg, Robert
Dear Fellow Town Meeting Members
Many TM members have written to me and to the list inquiring about Article 34. Several members have proposed town-wide discussions before considering an amendment to our by-laws. Others have said that we have too much to think about to spend precious time during this TM worrying about assault weapons. I write here to bring all TM members up to date, and to ask ALL of you to let me know your personnel recommendations. They will be both informative and decisive.
The Alternatives: Article 34, banning assault weapons, is a Citizens’ article that would prohibit weapons of mass mayhem in Lexington, but it does not ban ordinary guns. A Resolution has also been proposed which would ask the state legislature to toughen its laws about assault weapons. Those are two choices. A third would indefinitely postpone the Article.
Article 34 would prohibit the manufacture, sale, and possession of assault weapons and high capacity magazines in Lexington. It would not seize or confiscate any weapons. It does not touch ordinary guns or handguns. It would fine offenders $300 per offence.
How to Decide: As briefly as I can here and below, I set out the arguments for and against the Article, the alternative courses of action, and describe some of the pressures besetting the Town.
After you have read about the choices, please give me your opinion directly (robert_...@harvard.edu), rather than burdening the list with a flurry of emails. I will collate the responses and report back to this list.
Security and other Questions: Article 34 is a Citizens’ article. There is no point going forward with the Article if TM members, representing the citizens of Lexington, do not want to try to vote against assault weapons. On April 6, as planned, there will be heightened police security, a hired screening system, bag searches, and so on. We need not subject ourselves to this unusual and extra scrutiny – and face heavy and unremitting pressure from outsiders – if TM members no longer want to vote against assault weapons. As the lead signatory of Article 34, I am but the spear carrier for those who want such a chance to vote against large-scale weapons in Lexington. It is your choice, not mine, whether we go ahead as originally planned.
History: When I originally gathered signatures and proposed Article 34, I wrote a letter on this list to all TM members, spoke to Chief Corr and the Town Manager, and emailed Selectmen. TM members responded enthusiastically to my suggestion, as did many citizens of the Town. One long-serving TM member wrote “There are many of us here in Lexington who will happily support such an ordinance. It’s time to send a very strong message to the NRA and other supporters of ‘guns for all’.” Others said “Bravo!” or sent longer messages of support. Those in favor included our most senior members and our most junior ones, with no “nay” votes from any TM members.
Fast Forward: I modeled the proposed motion under Article 34 on successful local legislation enacted by Highland Park, IL, a suburb of Chicago. That local ordinance was blessed by a strong ruling in favor by the US Appeals Court for the 7th Circuit and a decision by the US Supreme Court NOT to hear any further appeal. Thus, in the Supreme Court’s view, the Highland Park ordinance did not violate the 2008 DC v Heller case which forbade the District of Columbia from taking handguns away from citizens. So Highland Park was not a 2nd Amendment case. Nor is our proposed Article 34 in any way an infringement of 2nd Amendment rights. (If anyone wants to read more about the 2nd Amendment, I attach an article written by me today for the Colonial Times.)
The Slaughter Continues: As Article 34 was being prepared, mass killings with assault weapons continued across the U. S. I need only mention the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Newtown, CT; the community college slaughter in Umpqua, Or; the assault on Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, CO; the violence very recently near Wichita, KS; and the San Bernardino, CA killings. Each was perpetrated by someone who was able to obtain an assault weapon and spray bullets and kill innocent children, mothers, fathers, and citizens. We don’t want anything like that to occur in Lexington, a traditionally very safe and well-policed town. Thus we also want, I would hope, to remove such lethal weapons from our townsmen -- just in case. Some owners of large guns now live near our schools. And, make no mistake, guns do kill, especially guns that are easily accessible rather than being locked up at a target-shooting club or some other secure place.
Some Numbers: Consider the fact that from 2005 to 2014 as many as 310,000 Americans lost their lives in or near their home towns from guns. In the same ten year period, 229 Americans were killed by terrorists.
Consider also that since 1970, more Americans have died from guns (1.45 million) than the number of Americans who have died in all of our wars from the Revolution and the World Wars through the battles in Afghanistan (1.4 million)! That is astonishing. These totals, and the earlier ones, include mass murders, ordinary murders, accidents, and suicides. It is time – indeed, well past time -- that Lexington did its small part to prevent possible carnage at home, where we have some control.
Opponents: The NRA and the Gun Owner’s League of Massachusetts obviously see Article 34 as a threat to gun ownership and to profits made from the sale of guns. About fifty supporters mobilized by GOAL and the NRA spoke strongly against Article 34 at a Selectmen’s meeting on Tuesday. Some of those opponents were from Lexington, some from Lowell and North Attleboro. We will see more of the same on April 6. (The Selectmen and I have received strong emails, letters, and telephone calls. I was called a “traitor” today by someone calling from out of state.)
Selectmen: The Selectmen are opposed to the Article. They, and Chief Corr, will speak against it at Town Meeting, largely (I gather) because it will put the safety of the town in jeopardy, and also make defending the town against the gun lobby and its supporters very difficult. No one should minimize that concern. Equally, Lexington may not want to give way to pressure from the gun lobby. The choice is rather stark.
The Selectmen also will tell Town Meeting that Town Counsel has received an advisory memo from the Attorney General’s staff saying that the AG “could” overrule our By Law amendment, if enacted, because it could be preempted by state law. “Could” is the operative word. One the one hand, being overturned by the AG could vitiate our efforts. On the other hand, TM would still have gone on record, publicly, against assault weapons, whatever the AG decides. Many of us think that going on record is important because it might embolden other Mass. cities and towns to follow our Lexington lead (as they did centuries earlier). Symbolism, in other words, is important.
Costs: There will be a significant security cost on April 6. If Article 34 should pass and IF the AG should uphold the by-law, there could be litigation. But noted attorneys in town have already volunteered to take on any cases on behalf of the Town, pro bono. Anyway, plaintiffs would be litigating a $300 fine, not seizure or confiscation, which makes any case much less complicated and has fewer constitutional implications.
Substitute Motion: Some Selectmen asked me to substitute a Resolution for the proposed By-law, in the interest of peace and safety. We agreed, after discussion, to Resolve to “urge” the legislature to consider stronger anti-assault weapons laws than are now on the books, and to incorporate the detailed language (defining assault weapons strictly and listing actual weapons) of the proposed By-Law. (Only by including the definitions and the lists, I believed, would a compromise Resolution keep faith with those who wanted to ban assault weapons in Lexington, and not represent a complete cave-in to the gun lobby.)
When I presented the requested “compromise” resolution before the Selectmen on Tuesday, in the presence of 50 or more antagonistic gun-owning opponents from in town and out of town, I was surprised that support from the Selectmen, even from those who had asked for the Resolution, was no longer there. Thus, a Resolution would not now have support from the Selectmen unless it were stripped of much of its detailed language. Even then, some would oppose it.
What is to be Done? Town Meeting members and I must make a decision. 1) Do we as a body want to defy the gun lobby and pass a ban against assault weapons in Lexington? 2) Do we want to satisfy ourselves with a modest Resolution to the legislature that could accomplish less than an outright ban? 3) Do we want to IP the article, hoping (as some have written) to have intensive conversations in town about guns?
If we want to go ahead with the first, or even the second, alternative, are we prepared to put ourselves as TM members through the nuisance and expense of weapons’ searches and bag inspections, amid a heavy police presence, on April 6? These are stark choices. I, personally, want to stand on principle and face down the NRA and all the mayhem that its policies and members inflict, but it would be enormously wasteful and foolish to do so if a majority of TM members did not want – under these unusual and trying circumstances – to try to vote to prohibit assault weapons. (I appreciate that you have not heard everything that might be said on TM floor on the night, but I have tried to set out the reasonably complete contours of the likely debate.)
Let me Know, Please: I cannot move ahead either to spare the Town anguish or to stand with principle until I have heard the voices of the majority of TM members. Please, urgently, send -- to my private email above -- your replies. And please respond even if you do not want to commit yourself. I need to hear a full expression of views.
With sincere apologies for the long, but necessary, exposition,
Robert Rotberg
Pct. 3.
Attachments: Proposed By Law; Compromise Resolution; Colonial Times article
Barry Orenstein
What Liberals Can Learn From the N.R.A.
By DAVID COLE
VILIFYING the National Rifle Association’s tactics has long been standard practice among liberals. In October, Hillary Clinton compared dealing with the N.R.A. to “negotiating with the Iranians or the Communists.” In January,President Obama accused the gun lobby of “holding Congress hostage.” The New York Daily News recently called Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s chief executive, a “terrorist.”
The passion underlying such condemnations may be understandable, especially in the wake of the horrific mass shootings that often prompt them. But this rhetoric does little to change the gun debate, and most likely reinforces gun owners’ worst fears about how liberals see them. Rather than demonize the N.R.A.’s strategies, liberals should emulate them. The organization is, after all, the most effective civil rights group in the United States today.
Consider what the N.R.A. has accomplished. Just a few decades ago, even loyal conservatives rejected the idea that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to bear arms, as opposed to the states’ prerogative to raise militias. In 1990, the retired Supreme Court chief justice Warren Burger, a Nixon nominee, dismissed the idea as a “fraud.” Yet in 2008, the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller ruled that the individual right to bear arms was no fraud, but a constitutional right.
How did the N.R.A. do it? It did not litigate Heller itself. But its efforts over three decades paved the way for the court’s decision.
The story begins in 1977, when hard-line members of the N.R.A. took charge at its annual convention and formally committed the group to defending the right to bear arms. The N.R.A. first focused on the states, lobbying to change state constitutions and laws to protect the right to possess and carry guns. The organization realized that most gun laws were enacted by states, not the federal government, and that it could win substantial victories there, in part by mobilizing its members, in part by working with the local affiliates it had in every state, and in part because opposition at the state level was largely absent. (Gun-control advocates tended to focus unproductively on Congress.)
The strategy paid off: By the time the Supreme Court took up Heller, most state constitutions protected an individual right to bear arms; nearly all states afforded citizens a right to carry concealed weapons unless they were specifically disqualified from doing so; gun makers enjoyed immunity from tort liability for illegal use of their guns; and the right to self-defense had been strengthened — all at the urging of the N.R.A. These changes made it much easier for the Supreme Court to recognize a federal right to bear arms, because for all practical purposes such a right already existed in so much of the country.
The N.R.A. also enlisted the academy. Beginning in the 1980s, it offered grants and prizes designed to encourage scholarship that buttressed its view of the Second Amendment. With N.R.A. assistance, legal scholars transformed the academic understanding of the Second Amendment, so that by the time the Supreme Court ruled in Heller, the dominant view in the legal literature supported an individual right to bear arms. Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion closely tracked that scholarship.
In addition, the N.R.A. succeeded in getting both Congress and the executive branch on record as endorsing the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.
In 1982, a Senate committee headed by Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah and an N.R.A. member, adopted the individual-rights view of the Second Amendment; Congress as a whole followed suit in gun rights legislation in 1986 and 2005. Later, the N.R.A. organized a friend-of-the-court brief in Heller on behalf of majorities in both the Senate and the House reiterating this position. And when John Ashcroft, another N.R.A. member, became attorney general in 2001, the N.R.A. prompted his decision to reverse the Justice Department’s long-held position that the Second Amendment protects only the states’ prerogative to raise a militia.
Most significantly, the N.R.A. recognizes the importance of political pressure to the realization of constitutional rights. It grades every candidate for state and federal office on his or her commitment to gun rights, regardless of party affiliation, and urges its five million members to vote accordingly. The N.R.A. was one of George W. Bush’s biggest backers in 2000 and 2004. When President Bush had the opportunity to appoint two justices to the Supreme Court in 2005, it was no surprise that both nominees — John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito — were supportive of gun rights. The vote in Heller was 5 to 4, with both Justice Roberts and Justice Alito in the majority.
There is nothing nefarious about any of this. It’s how constitutional law changes in America. In a similar fashion, advocates of same-sex marriage concentrated on bringing about change in the states before presenting the issue to the Supreme Court, and pursued a similarly multipronged advocacy strategy. Liberals who are unhappy with the state of constitutional law today — whether on voting rights, racial equality, campaign finance or, indeed, guns — would do well to stop condemning the N.R.A.’s methods and start following in its footsteps.
Barry Orenstein
781/862-1052
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Vicki Blier
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