The mainstream media is often dead wrong when it comes to arms and your right to bear them, sometimes however they are simply “out of pocket” with the claims they make and the opinions they share.
A recent opinion piece written for CNN by Jennifer Tucker was just another example of when voices in the mainstream media make claims that totally disregard what is true and what isn’t.
In a piece titled “Now that guns can kill hundreds in minutes, Supreme Court should rethink the rights question,” Jennifer Tucker argues that because technology has changed drastically when it comes to guns the Supreme Court need to rethink the 2nd Amendment of Americans in its upcoming 2nd Amendment case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Kevin Bruen.
Tucker references DC v. Heller in her article in a strange manner that we can not say is entirely consistent with her claims of the Supreme Court not previously answering the question of “Are there any limits to the type of firearm that can be carried outside of the home?” In the article, Tucker argues that while the court did discern that there were different categories of firearms they did not discern what firearms were considered dangerous or unusual. There is an issue right off of the bat with this one, it is not the job of the Supreme Court to categorize various firearms into groups and effectively make laws regulating these categories. It should also be said that this is something that has already been done, the NFA or National Firearms Act originally enacted in 1934 along with the ATF(Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) already categorize different types of firearms and regulate them separately. Â
Tucker quickly shifts away from the implication that the Supreme Court should be legislating and moves on towards how it is that they should be legislating firearms. Tucker brings up the US Army’s commissioned study on weapon effectiveness, a study that was commissioned over 50 years ago. This study was known as the Theoretical Lethality Index(TLI) and it sought to quantify data surrounding the effectiveness of firearms. The TLI quantifies data by estimating how many people a soldier, someone with a serious amount of training, could kill in an hour-long time frame. Tucker makes the point that the TLI should be used to gauge what exactly civilians should be allowed to carry.Â
Tucker goes on to “forgive” the founding fathers for their inability to understand the pace of innovation as it pertains to firearms technology. The argument is made in the article that the founders could have no idea about what guns would come in the future because the flintlock pistol has been innovated for over 300 years. This point, in particular, is totally mute: the founders were very aware of the technological innovations being made at the time of the founding and the technological innovations being made in the early 18oos, innovations that Jeniffer Tucker admits were extremely advanced. To make the argument that the founders would have disagreed with the 2nd Amendment because weapons got more lethal is ridiculous, there are historical documents showing that Thomas Jefferson personally approved someone wanting to privately acquire a cannon and other documents showing that the founders were not only aware of new technologies in this space but were in support of them.Â
The final point made by Tucker in her article is about the upcoming Supreme Court case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Kevin Bruen. Tucker makes the point that the court needs to look into not just how Americans can carry but what they can carry. “Weapons designed with an ever-increasing capacity to kill large numbers of people in battle, with long barrels and large-capacity magazines, have no place in public spaces, supermarkets, and shopping malls — not on the grounds of a generic right to self-defense. When it takes up this new gun case, the Court should take technological innovation into account and acknowledge that guns are now exponentially more lethal than they were when the Constitution was written,” Tucker wrote.Â
The idea that people are wandering around wielding machine guns in public spaces is facetious to put it one way. The idea that technological innovation was never considered by the founders is also facetious, considering that the founders never really could understand what would come in the future but did understand and even acknowledge that change was bound to come. If you went back in time and told someone 20 years ago about our world of smartphones and mass information hubs like Twitter and Facebook they would call you a liar, one could use the argument made by Tucker for regulation of the 1st Amendment. Surely the founders never envisioned that mass amounts of propaganda and disinformation would circulate in every household and in every American’s mind, because of this fact we need to add regulation to the 1st Amendment.Â
Virtually every argument made by the gun control lobby and so-called experts like Jennifer Tucker misses one key detail. Those who plan on committing murder do not mind breaking a few laws in order to do so. Mass murderers like Stephen Paddock and Nicolas Cruz showed total irreverence for the law prior to killing people. Changes to the law of the land like those recommended by Tucker only punish those who intend to follow the law, no one else.Â
Jennifer Tucker is an associate professor of history at Wesleyan University and the Vice President of the Association of Firearms History & Museums, considering her position, it is scary to think that this is where these awful ideas are coming from.Â
This article is reminiscent of the major screw-up by USA Today, where the company revealed an animated video of an AR-15 with all the “possible modifications.” In that instance, the media made the implication that chainsaws were something that was regularly added to an AR-15 as an under-barrel attachment. USA Today’s claims and implications totally disregarded reality, just like the claims and implications made by Tucker in her CNN piece.
