2nd Amendment

17 Pages 4126 Words

waiting period for the purchase of handguns and provides for the creation of a national computer network to check the backgrounds of gun buyers. The Clinton Administration was also able to pass an assault-style firearms bill that banned the sale and distribution of certain types of automatic weapons. The ban, part of a 1994 crime bill, took effect just months before Republicans gained control of Congress.

During the past year, President Clinton's Administration pushed to get a terrorism bill passed and signed into law. During the whole fight, the President and his allies insinuated more than once that opponents of the bill were weak on crime. Gun laws tend to be passed in an atmosphere of hysteria that discourages critical reflection. The Gun Control Act of 1968 was approved soon after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. In fact, on the very day that Kennedy died, President Johnson issued an emotional appeal to Congress demanding passage of a federal gun-control law. Two dramatic incidents had helped create a...