June 30 - To the Editor:
The recent opinion piece by Cathryn Spreeman (An attack on gun rights is an attack on us all - June 29 Fosters) deserves a response. Her contention that both the Second Amendment and law-abiding gun owners are under attack is simply not true. There is no concerted effort to repeal the Second Amendment (and if there were, it would certainly fail), and no one in any position of authority has expressed any desire to take away everyones guns. In fact, people arguing for sensible restrictions on certain firearms often go out of their way to say they support the Second Amendment and that people should be able to keep their guns for hunting and home defense.
The desire to restrict certain gun rights has a long history, and several recent Supreme Court decisions explicitly support it. A decision earlier this year upheld Californias right to impose a 10-day waiting limit to purchase a gun. In the District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the court specifically indicated that the Second Amendment allows for certain restrictions, including restrictions on gun sales, outlawing concealed weapons, restrictions on who is allowed to own a gun, and banning certain types of weapons.
In fact, banning certain types of guns also has a long history in this country. In 1936, sawed-off shotguns and Tommy guns were heavily taxed and regulated by both state and federal law, to the point that sales plummeted, which essentially had the effect of banning them. In 1986 (in a law signed by President Reagan), Congress made fully automatic weapons (machine guns) illegal. None of these actions constituted an attack on the Second Amendment, nor did the 1994 ban on assault weapons, which expired in 2004. Another ban on these
