The only thing that is a fraud is citing Burger as an authority on the 2nd Amendment.
While on the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Warren Burger never wrote a word about the Second Amendment. After he left the Court he became a paid puppet for Handgun Control Inc. (what the Brady Campaign was called in the early 90's).
A more in depth examination of Burger's 2nd Amendment views is his commentary in the January 14, 1990 issue of Parade Magazine. Placed next to the later PBS comments, the Parade article has such incredible contradictions of constitutional understanding it can only be read as evidence of Burger's willingness to sell anti-gun statements hostile to his own beliefs to the highest bidder.
In Parade, Burger states that there is an unquestioned right for Americans to defend their homes with firearms; that such a right, "need not be challenged". He continues that, "the Constitution protects the right of hunters to own and keep sporting guns for hunting game," in the same fashion that no one could, "challenge the right to own and keep fishing rods and other equipment for fishing . . . ."
Burger goes on to tell us what types of guns are protected by the Constitution; "To 'keep and bear arms' for hunting today is essentially a recreational activity and not an imperative of survival, as it was 200 years ago; 'Saturday night specials' and machine guns are not recreational weapons and surely are as much in need of regulation as motor vehicles."
So, Burger does admit that the express constitutional mention of [the right of the people to] "keep and bear arms" guarantees private citizens (not connected to any militia nor acting under militia orders) a constitutional right to own guns for home defense and a right to own hunting guns.
OK
Burger goes further and recognizes three exemplary rights -- hunting, fishing, and buying cars -- that are so firmly guaranteed by the Constitution that they are beyond question while knowing that no Supreme Court case has ever held any of these activities to be Constitutionally protected.
What can we draw from Warren's wandering analysis?
Machine guns (an presumably cheap?? handguns) can be regulated in a fashion like motor vehicles but guns suitable for defense of the home and guns suitable for hunting should be as immune from governmental oversight as fishing equipment since the right to own such things is unquestionable and not subject to challenge (including any militia based attack on the right).
Sounds like in 1990 he's advocating the NRA's position that a unassailable constitutional right to own guns for various legal purposes without any militia conditioning exists . . .
And then he is paid by handgun Control Incorporated to say such a position is a "fraud" less than a year later????
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www.foxnews.com
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
