Subject: The Infamous ACLU Policy #47 (boo, hiss)
Date: 13 Apr 90 02:30:49 GMT
[Ed Ipser]

After sending a copy of the Yale Law Journal article "The Embarrasing Second
Amendment" to several of the Southern California ACLU staff and bringing
to their attention, the NRA suit against the California "assault weapons"
ban, i received, in reply, a copy of their infamous policy statement #47
(adapted to the Southern California chapter):

      We deplore the ghastly fact that in the life of this nation the use
   of handguns brings death to 60 men, women and children by accident--
   and 200 more by intent--every week.
      We concur with repeated rulings of every court that has ruled on
   the issue--including the U.S. Suprme Court--that the Constitution's
   Second Amendment provision for militia never has meant that all 
   individuals have a right to own all kinds of firearms.
      We urge passage of federal legislation--and meanwhile, in its absence,
   the partial remedy of state law--to prohibit, with few and narrowly drawn
   exceptions, the private ownership and possession of handguns, much the 
   way existing laws prohibit machine guns, grenades and cannons.
      We declare that Americans and their rights to life and liberty will
   face less danger in the presence of such laws and their enforcement
   than in the deadly, daily civilian shooting war around us now.
      The National ACLU gun control policy, adopted in 1967, calls for the
   reistration of firearms and the licensing of owners and dealers.  The 
   Union recommends the adoption of strong federal gun control legislation
   as a "necessary condition of fostering the atmosphere of open and fearless
   debate on which a free society rests."
      Both National ACLU and the Southern California affiliate base their
   policy provisions on long-standing interpretations of the Second Amendment
   by the U.S. Supreme Court, that the individual's right to keep and bear
   arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of "a well-regulated
   militia".

   (Adopted by Board of Directors in September 1976.  See national ACLU
   plicy #47, "Gun Control".)
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