Wayne Lapierre's Universal Background Checks

The Bill of Rights is something the American people hold close to them, especially their right to bear arms. Recently there has been a lot of debate over implementing gun regulations without infringing on the rights of the people. While a position of this is expressed in Wayne LaPierre’s “Universal Background Checks Mean Gun Registration, Gun Bans and Confiscation”, Jeffrey Toobin’s “So You Think You Know the Second Amendment” provides a more valid position evaluating the issue of gun control.
Universal background checks are a big discussion lately in our country’s current climate. Some see them as a step toward safety, and others see them as a red flag. Wayne LaPierre voiced his concerns and opposes this idea in his article “Universal Background

LaPiere asserts that New York instituted an assault weapons ban. This was found to be true in an article form the New York Times dated in 1991 that stated“The City Council passed a bill, 28 to 4, yesterday banning assault weapons in New York City.” LaPierre then said that New York and Connecticut residents had to endure “dragnet-style demands.” This is found to be false in an article from The Federalist dated June 25, 2015: “the residents of these states have refused to go along with the kinds of laws that gun-control advocates view as a minimum for what they would like to see adopted at the federal level. If New York and Connecticut won’t go along, what do they expect would happen in “red” states?”Lastly, LaPierre maintains that background checks are equivalent to gun bans and gun confiscation. “The crucial point is the final one: Australia does not have a bill of rights, and that, ultimately, is the reason it was able to confiscate guns. Australians have no constitutional right to bear arms, so seizing their weapons did not violate their constitutional rights. Gun confiscation in the United States would require violating not only the Second Amendment, but the fourth and fifth as well, and possibly even the first.” Confiscation cannot happen in America because it is in our Bill of Rights, for the government to confiscate it people’s guns would be unconstitutional. New York also requires a background

Toobin asserts that Warren Burger mocked the individual rights interpretation and calls it a fraud. This was found to be true. According to an NPR article, dated March 5, 2018: Former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative, said the idea that there was an individual right to bear arms was "a fraud." If he were writing the Bill of Rights now, he said in 1991, "There wouldn 't be any such thing as the Second Amendment." Toobin also asserts that the NRA underwent an important shift in 1977. This is also true. According to an article from the NYU School of Law dated May 20, 2014: “...more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organization’s leadership. ” Lastly Toobin asserts a major claim that the interpretation of the Second Amendment stayed consistent for nearly 100 years until 1977 when the NRA reinterpreted it. According to the same article from the NYU School of Law: “ From 1888 through 1959, every single one on the Second Amendment concluded it did not guarantee an individual right to a gun. The first to argue otherwise, written by a William and Mary law student named Stuart R. Hays, appeared in 1960.” Jeffrey Toobin has authority in this topic because he graduated from Harvard Law with honors and is the senior legal analyst for CNN and has been since 2002. Toobin’s primary job is a lawyer, however he has even written a book