Political Horizons: Taking aim at Amendment 2

As of Thursday last week, 35 of the 98 law enforcement officers killed nationally in the line of duty this year were shot to death, according to the preliminary statistics gathered by the National Law Enforcement Museum in Washington, D.C.

Over the past decade, 570 of the 1,559 law enforcement deaths were caused by firearms, which is more than any other cause, the statistics show.

The number of gun-related police deaths led Terry Landry, former superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, to oppose Constitutional Amendment No. 2, which is on the Nov. 6 ballot. Amendment 2 could lead to more policemen dying, said state Rep. Landry, D-New Iberia.

Amendment 2 could overturn laws designed to help ensure that concealed guns are kept out of many volatile situations, he said. It’s the police who are called when people waving guns get out of control, Landry said.

That doesn’t include mass shootings that now seem to occur every few weeks.

“These shootings are carried out by people with mental problems, grudges against society, or because for a few minutes it gives them a feeling of power. Our current laws afford these people access to guns,” Landry said. “Amendment 2 would tip things even further out of balance.”

Landry made similar arguments during the legislative session. But the Louisiana House and state Senate overwhelmingly voted to support the bill. Gov. Bobby Jindal and the Republican Party of Louisiana support passage of Amendment 2.

If approved by a majority of the state’s voters, the amendment would require the most-stringent standard of judicial review, called “strict scrutiny,” when considering the legality of gun-control laws. Generally, that means the state would have to prove that a law restricting the right to bear arms is of “a compelling interest,” and is “narrowly tailored” in a way to impact as few people as possible.

The National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action argues that had one justice voted the other way in a couple of 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decisions, then gun rights would have been curtailed. The change of a single justice could lead to decisions with which the NRA disagrees.

“If that were to happen, gun rights advocates want to have constitutional language in place at the state level that would unequivocally express the principle in Louisiana that possessing a weapon is a fundamental right,” according to an analysis by the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, a Baton Rouge-based government policy research group funded by individual memberships.

So, what does that mean?

The Council for A Better Louisiana, better known as CABL, says “strict scrutiny” would allow legal challenges to state laws that, for instance, prohibit carrying firearms into bars or at Mardi Gras parades, or into churches. CABL is a Baton Rouge-based nonprofit group, whose directors are professionals and officers in large businesses. It lobbies state government on policy issues.

“One could foresee a situation where a student or someone else charged with carrying a firearm on a college campus could challenge the constitutionality of the gun-free campus restriction, thus leaving it to the courts to decide under a new and much-higher standard of scrutiny if our current law is too restrictive,” CABL wrote last week in its opposition to Amendment 2. “CABL feels strongly, in agreement with our universities, that the combination of guns and still-maturing students is not a good mix.”

Interestingly, police officers and their representatives were quiet during the debate before the Louisiana Legislature and have been since. Individual policemen and state troopers in Baton Rouge and New Orleans — while loquacious on this and many subjects — refuse to be identified commenting publicly.

Chris Nassif said the Louisiana Union of Police Associations has no position on Amendment 2. “Though we support the right of citizens to legally keep and bear arms, we strongly oppose any legislation to weaken our current concealed carry weapons law,” said Nassif, the union’s president and an officer with the Alexandria Police Department.

Mark Ballard is editor of The Advocate’s Capitol news bureau. His email address is [e-mail].

Comments

1) Comment by tp5sk0 - 15/10/2012

I ought to be a poster boy for more gun-control laws. My mother was a forty-four year old (nobody) when she was shot to death September 9, 1981, in Houston, Texas. She was waiting to clock into work with a group of co-workers that morning when she was gunned down in right in front of them. There was nothing anyone could have done to save her. Her attacker was the only one present who was armed. All six shots from the revolver were emptied into her body on the ground she was then pistol-whipped. Her co-workers finally restrained her attacker and held him for the police after the gun was empty. She died about an hour later in the E.R. at Ben Taub Hospital. Pardon the graphic details but I have had over thirty one years to live with these facts. A number of laws were broken that fateful that morning. Murders often exercise “cruel an unusual” capital punishment on anyone at anytime they please. It is open season on us all. We only hear of the bloodshed when they target high profile people (somebody) or large group especially if children are involved. The cost a typical murderer has to pay is really quite small in comparison to their crime no matter “cruel an unusual punishment” they executed their innocent victim. But the results are always to same. Somebody gets dead! It was many years later I learned my mother’s executioner had murdered before! So now that it is clearly understood he was under a restraining order, he was a convicted felon, a convicted felon with a gun, a convicted felon gun committing murder again! Any one with half a brain knows these things are against the law! Yet simply put laws protect no one, but more on that latter. On average about six years in prison is the cost most murderers pay. A few years confinement on the taxpayer dime is the cost for so many lost innocent lives. A high profile (somebody) or (large group) may serve little more time, maybe life, maybe! Occasionally some do get the needle or as it is now so often being called “cruel an unusual punishment”. As opposed to the charity they show their victims I suppose. Murder victims never received a jury trial, no appeal rights; most victims only receive a brutal painful death! That day my mom was simply executed! I don't get to see her again, ever! No prison visits from friends and family like her murderer probably received. No I just get to visit a simple stone in a graveyard and wonder what might have been if only... At the time my family could be told nothing of his trial or his fate. It seems that too was against the law. It took the advent of the internet to finally learn a few minor details. I have once again to read more simple minded pap like this article. Big deal! Explain the stupid logic like this article to my mom and shout it real loud. Eternity is a long way off! I love cops like this former Louisiana top-cop! I don't buy any of his anti-Second Amendment bilge. The common sense meaning of the Second Amendment isn’t difficult to understand. So if citizens are disarmed to defer to the police, then cops should be willing to disarm too! That will never happen! Cops like this are just foxes guarding the hen house! What he is really saying is, "gun-control laws for thee not for me!" Cops like this scare the hell out of me.

2) Comment by Cousin Dave - 14/10/2012

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