Gun Rights

…During the week of April 21-25, 2008, thousands of college students will attend classes wearing empty holsters, in protest of state laws and school policies that disarm law-abiding citizens licensed to carry concealed handguns virtually everywhere else.

…Both candidates said they support and respect an individual's right to own guns, but the positions they endorsed -- an ‘assault weapons’ ban, expanded police access to federal gun-trace data, and keeping guns out of the ‘wrong hands’ -- are straight out of the gun-control play book.

…The Associated Press reported last week that a judge had temporarily blocked Philadelphia from enforcing five gun-control ordinances pending a challenge from the National Rifle Association.

…Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has worked to assure uneasy gun owners that he believes the Constitution protects their rights and that he doesn’t want to take away their guns.

A report in the Minneapolis Star Tribune said a proposal to ban the use of lead shot by small-game hunters on public lands in Minnesota's agricultural region has been shot down by the bill's chief author.

Volokh's compilation of state constitutional guarantees of gun rights is interesting reading – particularly Pennsylvania’s very clear language dating from 1776 and 1790.

…Are the two Democrat candidates misrepresenting their positions on gun rights to gain an edge in the Pennsylvania Democrat primary?

Wal-Mart has agreed to adopt a 10-point retailing system pushed by the anti-gun group Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Wal-Mart, the largest seller of firearms in the nation, cooperated in the drafting of and adopted what the Mayors Against Illegal Guns group calls the Responsible Firearms Retailer Partnership. …

The number of Virginians who obtained a permit to carry a concealed weapon jumped 60 percent last year over 2006, an increase that many gun experts say was a reaction to the fatal shootings of 32 students and professors at Virginia Tech.

WASHINGTON -- As Moses, Charlton Heston thunderously rallied his people with the Ten Commandments in hand. The tablet of his political life was carved with something else - the Second Amendment.Heston was not just the public face of the gun-rights movement but a good deal of the fire in its belly during a transformational time in the decades-old debate. He lived to see Democrats running away from a cause they once embraced, scared…

The often fierce debate over the Second Amendment has centered on whether it was intended to protect the rights of all Americans to own guns, or only those who are members of state militia groups. The poll makes it clear which side Americans come down on. Gun owners (roughly one-third of the U.S. adult population) are nearly universal in endorsing the view that the Second Amendment guarantees their right to own guns. Non-owners are less likely to view the amendment this way, but a majority still do.

Here are some different views of the Heller arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court: