I served as a counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, attached to a U.S. senator who was one of the original co-sponsors of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. I worked in the Senate when the act was up for renewal. The law was not re-enacted. With the recent media coverage of several incidents of tragic firearms violence, questions of gun control have risen again. Answers are complex.
The positions of those who oppose any restrictions and those who are against civilian gun ownership are relatively simple. The former tend to blanket themselves in the Second Amendment, notwithstanding that no court has said that the federal or state governments cannot restrict some forms of ownership such as the current prohibition on general civilian ownership of machine guns. The latter face perhaps an even bigger hurdle: the explicit language of the Constitution coupled with the U.S. Supreme Court’s two recent rulings cementing individuals’ gun-ownership rights.
