At 13:21 5/07/97 -0400, Jeff Barber wrote:

The NRA knows this. They just don't trust the Supremes to agree with their conclusion. Understandably so, given the court's record-- not to mention its usual reluctance to overturn precedents.

This is a problem with constitutions or any other sort of written documents. Pinheads can always say the document doesn't *really* mean what it clearly says. There's obviously no way to fix that through the document itself.

(I'm sure Jim Bell will say he has a solution though. :-)

As if on cue! If the NRA had any guts, they would announce that they have concluded after years of observation and study that there are enormous costs to having the RTKBA continue to be poorly respected, costs which translate into (at least) potentially hundreds or maybe even thousands of innocent deaths per year, not to mention the continuing degradation of respect for various other constitutional rights. It would then observe that if we come to the reasonably egalitarian conclusion that the life of a Supreme Court justice or Senator or Representative is no more valuable than the life of an ordinary citizen, the solution to the 2nd amendment problem is clear. (Some (many?) courts seem to recognize the "lesser evil" defense, the idea that if a person has to choose between tolerating a greater evil or committing a crime ("lesser evil") to prevent it, he is entitled to do the latter. I'm not suggesting that they would view this philosophy as applicable in this particular case; merely that it is appropriate to do so.) The NRA is a fairly large organization. At any one time, there are probably over a hundred members with terminal illnesses, or others who would be willing to give their lives in the performance of a task to punish somebody for violating citizens' rights by official actions. A public announcement by the NRA that they will gladly pay upwards of a million dollars in "life insurance benefits" to to the heirs of any member who dies in this type of supreme service (or a million dollars in legal defense, etc) would put the "fear of God" into the thugs. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com