This is from [url]www.gunsandammomag.com[/url].
[b]Time For A 28th Amendment[/b]
One mans approach to clarifying the gun rights issue
By Chuck Klein
The recent Emerson Decision from the 5th District Court of Appeals acknowledged what we've known all along: That people have the individual right to keep and bear arms (U.S. v. Timothy Joe Emerson, 99-10331, 16 October 2001, www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/99/99-10331-cr0.htm). However, like so many other court decisions, it creates more problems than it solves.
The court confused the issue by reserving the government's power to restrict certain aspects, such as regulating the bearing of concealed arms and other possible infringements. Therefore the mode of bearing--as well as the type of arms that we can keep--is still subject to subjective government control.
If any one word could emulate the controversy over the Second Amendment, it has to be "semantics"--the meaning of words. The words "arms" and "people" mean different things to different persons. To some on the far left, the only "people" who should be allowed to "keep and bear arms" would be active-duty military personnel and police. On the other hand, the extreme right has touted that "people" means any and all persons. Militia extremists are convinced "arms" means anything in use by the military, including tanks, bombs and rockets. The opposite camp firmly believes it only refers to weapons in use at the time of the Constitution's ratification-- c.1790.
The word "People" certainly cannot refer, for pragmatic reasons, to everybody. If all "people" could "keep and bear arms," then we'd have to allow prison inmates to carry concealed and permit grade schoolers to swagger across the playground packing a .25 Baby Browning. That's not realistic or practical--any more than restricting "arms" exclusively to that class of "people" who have the power of arrest.
Perhaps the time is right to enact a new constitutional amendment to clear up the confusion and uncertainty created by the courts. So as not to fall into a trap of ambiguity again, the wording to this new amendment, the 28th Amendment, must be sure, certain and unequivocal.
Some might think it rather presumptuous that a mere "gunwriter" could draft something so significant as a constitutional amendment. However, since the original Constitution was written by amateurs, and since we, just regular law-abiding laymen, are the ones most affected by the new amendment, it stands to reason that one of us should be trusted with its authorship.
Therefore I propose this 28th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. . .