As I write this, I’m at my favorite place in the whole world, the living room of my house on the Delmarva Peninsula, a broad spit of land surrounded by water – the Atlantic Ocean on one side, the Chesapeake Bay on the other. I love this place because of the serenity it gives me and my husband, Jim. That’s funny: Thirty years ago, we went to great lengths, he and I, to avoid serenity. Our lives were great adventures.

Jim rose to the top of his professional world. If you’re a press secretary, the best you can ever rise to is to speak for the President of the United States. I am very proud of him, and I know how proud Jim was to serve. His disappointment about his career being shattered is still apparent. On the other hand, anyone who has a conversation with Jim finds out what a clever and quick wit he possesses.

This past Sunday, I read a fascinating story in the New York Times Sunday magazine about a young baseball player who rose through the ranks – little league, high school baseball, college ball, the minor leagues, and finally got his big day, being called up to play for the Chicago Cubs. He was sent in to pinch hit. He was thrilled. The crowd was enormous. His mother and father were in the stands. And the first pitch thrown was a fastball that hit him in the head.

Instantly, his career was shattered by a head injury. He has struggled since to realize his dream. But he’s still a fighter, and he’ll never give up.

Wow – did that story ever resonate with my husband. On top of all the other odd similarities, Jim’s a huge Cubs fan.

They call press secretaries “flaks” behind the scenes, because you’re expected to “take the flak” for the boss. In war, “taking flak” means being shot at. And in 1981, Jim literally did get shot, along with President Ronald Reagan, by a lunatic who shouldn’t have been allowed to buy a gun.

Jim lived, but his recovery was long and hard and incomplete. He’ll be in a wheelchair forever, and he’s in pain frequently.

The terrible ordeal he went through led to the passage of the Brady Law, and we’re both very proud and we’re eternally grateful for all the members of Congress – Republican and Democrat, Conservative and Liberal – who voted for it. But there’s more work to do.

There is a broad misunderstanding in our country that the way criminals get guns is by breaking into houses and stealing them. And sure, that happens sometimes. But mostly, they buy them, from people who buy them from gun dealerships expressly for the purpose of reselling them to criminals for a profit, to get around the Brady Law.

We have to stop this. And we know how to stop it.

Please, on this anniversary that for Jim and I is like an annual headache, call your member of Congress and tell them to join the fight against illegal gun trafficking. And I mean all of you. Even the gun rights supporters who I know are reading this. This is not a threat to legitimate gun owners – if we close the loopholes that criminals use to get guns, we’ll all be safer.

Thanks for letting me visit with you all today. I’ll read your comments as the day goes on.

(Note to readers: this blog entry, as well as past blog entrees, are co-posted on www.huffingtonpost.com)

The self-important posturing of the NRA leadership not only misunderstands American tradition and our system of laws, but also represents an enormous threat to many of the rights we Americans take for granted. The gun lobby has long tried to put itself above the law when it comes to the common-sense regulations and rules of legal liability applicable to all other businesses. Now they’re pushing “guns in the workplace� laws in a number of states that try to place their single-minded view of gun rights above everyone’s property rights.

From the Tampa Tribune:

Monday, the Florida Chamber of Commerce announced a tongue-in-cheek “Bring Your Gun to Work Day” and filled a car with weapons and other controversial, but legal, material.

“This bill is not about guns. This bill is a frontal assault on property rights,” says chamber Executive Vice President Mark Wilson, who sees it as a challenge to employers’ fundamental right to set rules governing their private property.

The constitutional rights of free speech and to bear arms take precedent, contends Marion Hammer, a lobbyist who represents the NRA.

No matter how they dress it up, the message the gun pushers send is the same: Our guns are always more important than any of your other rights.

Judges who ignore decades-old precedent, who dismiss express Constitutional language as being irrelevant, and who substitute their views for those of democratically-elected representatives – these have been the targets of “conservative� politicians and commentators over the years.

Now those judicial activists are at it again. Last Friday, two judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia – for the first time in American history — declared a gun law unconstitutional based on their reading of the Second Amendment.

The March 9, 2007 decision in Parker v. District of Columbia is judicial activism at its worst:

1. It ignores binding Supreme Court precedent. In the 1939 case of Miller v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court indicated that there was no Second Amendment right independent of “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia…� and that the Second Amendment “must be interpreted and applied� in such a way as to support the “obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces.�

The judges in the majority in Parker don’t even mention the Miller case until halfway into their decision, and then ignore its holding. As the dissenting judge made clear, Miller “succinctly — but unambiguously – set down its understanding of the Second Amendmentâ€� and this court did not follow. If this Appellate Court can treat precedent of nearly 70 years so cavalierly, what other changes might we see in the coming years?

2. It discounts the express language of the Second Amendment. While the Second Amendment has only twenty-seven words (and three commas), many try to ignore its opening clauses: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…� To the D.C. Circuit judges, this “prefatory� language defines a “salutary civic purpose� only, but does not mean anything in the way of limiting “an individual right to keep and bear arms.�

The weakness of this view becomes more obvious when looking closely at the sources relied upon in the Parker decision – dicta from the one Circuit Court decision out-of-step with seven other Circuits; a dissenting opinion in a case from the Ninth Circuit which held that California’s assault-weapons ban could not be challenged on Second Amendment grounds; arguments by a dissenting minority of Pennsylvanians in 1787; and the “infamous� Dred Scott case from 1857. Even James Madison (the Second Amendment’s author) makes clear that “keep and bear arms� referred to military uses – he even used a “conscientious objector� clause in the initial draft of the Second Amendment. These Judges, however, find more relevant that phrases like “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts� demonstrate a non-military use of the word (even though that last phrase came out of the Trojan War).

3. It substitutes its policy judgments for those of the local elected officials. Interestingly, the judges in Parker do admit that “reasonable restrictions� to “promote the government’s interest in public safety� are still allowed even under their interpretation of the Second Amendment – but then they say that they, not D.C.’s elected officials, should say what is “reasonable.�

Examples of those permissible “restrictions� mentioned by the Court include: “registration of firearms;� “firearm proficiency testing� (which would seem to imply licensing); denials to those who have “personal characteristics, such as insanity or felonious conduct, that make gun ownership dangerous� including “idiots, lunatics, common drunkards, vagabonds, paupers, and persons convicted of any infamous crime;� requirements “that a gun ordinarily be kept unloaded or even that a trigger lock be attached under some circumstances;� and bans on “an individual right to keep weapons of mass destruction� (specifically using an analogy to Revolutionary-era “cannons�) as well as “cumbersome, expensive, or rare equipment.�

Once restrictions are contemplated, however, who should best decide what restrictions make sense for a specific jurisdiction? Maybe there are legitimate policy differences with the D.C. ordinance, but elected officials at the State and local level should be given some level of deference in reaching “reasonable� balances of interests.

The decision in Parker, if upheld, could lead to all current and proposed firearms laws being called into question. This decision is wrong on the law, wrong on the history, and substitutes decision-making by elected officials with the preferences of a slim judicial majority.

(Note to readers: this blog entry, as well as past blog entrees, are co-posted on www.huffingtonpost.com)

Concerns about the need for and use (or misuse) of military-style assault weapons have started to get a lot of attention in the last few weeks. On February 16, 2007, Jim Zumbo, a well-known hunting writer, posted a blog on the website for Outdoor Life Magazine, where he has worked since 1962, most recently as hunting editor, talking about “terrorist rifles”:

I must be living in a vacuum. The guides on our hunt tell me that the use of AR and AK rifles have a rapidly growing following among hunters, especially prairie dog hunters. I had no clue. Only once in my life have I ever seen anyone using one of these firearms.

I call them ‘assault’ rifles, which may upset some people. Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity. I’ll go so far as to call them ‘terrorist’ rifles.

Sorry, folks, in my humble opinion, these things have no place in hunting. We don’t need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them, which is an obvious concern. I’ve always been comfortable with the statement that hunters don’t use assault rifles. We’ve always been proud of our ’sporting firearms’.

After posting this blog, Zumbo was fired from the magazine, had his television show on the Outdoor Channel cancelled, and lost his sponsors. The NRA suspended their long-term relationship with Zumbo and pointed to the destruction of Zumbo’s career as an example of what happens when somebody crosses them. Some outdoor writers have started to speak up, however.

According to Bill Schneider in New West on February 26, 2007:

Some outdoor writers came to Zumbo’s defense such as Tony Dean of South Dakota and Pat Wray of Oregon, but most were apprehensive…. The message was clear. Say the one word the gun rights snipers don’t like, and the only job you can get is greeting people at Wal-Mart.

***

Yet, this group of NRA-trained thugs can not only eat a good friend alive like meat thrown into a school of piranhas, but they can and have made other outdoor writers ultra-wary about saying anything that might cause their own fate, which is the goal, of course.

To me, it seems like outdoor writers are giving the black rifle Gestapo their victory with their silence. And not just writers. Where is the outrage from millions of hunters who agree with every word Zumbo posted on his blog? Where are the thousands of e-mails to Remington, Outdoor Life or the Outdoor Channel from hunters who wouldn’t be caught dead hunting with an assault rifle? Why aren’t they coming to Zumbo’s defense?

Pat Wray, in the Corvallis (OR) Gazette Times, on February 24, 2007, called those attacking Zumbo “a crowd of vicious, vengeful, vitriolic jackals” and blames the NRA making them so:

For decades the NRA has fostered a climate of fear and paranoia among gun owners. They have hammered home the message that everyone is out to take our guns and that compromise is tantamount to treason. They created an attitude within their membership that anyone who disagreed was an enemy and the best defense was a good offense.

Added into the mix recently were stories like that on the front-page of USA Today on February 19, 2007 which quoted police officials who have seen “more higher-caliber weapons…on the street since the expiration” in September 2004 of the 1994 national ban on certain assault weapons, and “are now ‘frequently’ encountering assault weapons in local robberies and during simple traffic stops.”

Some elected officials are asking whether or not these types of weapons should be so readily available. In response to S.B.43 in Maryland, I had an op-ed piece in the Baltimore Sun on February 27, 2007 and also participated in a news conference and Maryland Senate Hearing on a proposed “Assault Weapons Ban” for Maryland. On average, a semiautomatic assault rifle was traced to a Maryland crime every 48 hours, according to a study released last fall by Ceasefire Maryland. This group relied on ATF data showing at least 789 assault rifles tied to crime in Maryland in a four-year period.

We need to be asking what these weapons are used for and whether they need to be regulated in order to promote public safety. If some don’t like the restrictive definitions being proposed, what alternatives do they suggest? Or, should we have no restrictions, even on actual “terrorist rifles”?

(Note to readers: this blog entry, as well as past blog entrees, are co-posted on www.huffingtonpost.com)