I am writing you regarding your statement on the President's plan to reduce gun violence.
As a lawyer you are probably familiar with the Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller 554 US 570 (2008). In this decision, the Supreme Court has expanded on the ruling of United State v. Miller 370 US 174 (1939) that the second amendment protects the people's individual right to bear arms. In Miller, as you probably know the Court held that those arms protected are those suitable for militia purposes. Heller further expanded on that definition as those in the common use for lawful purposes. I can't imagine any group The People could not point to more as having arms in the common use for a lawful purpose than the various law enforcement agencies across the nation.
According to those decisions ANY attempt to ban the arms used by our police forces would waste an excessive amount of national treasure on the enacting, enforcing, and legal defense of such a law that has a high probability of being struck down by a legal challenge.
While the court, in both decisions has affirmed the ability to regulate those "dangerous and unusual weapons" in, for example, the National Firearms Act. And as a citizen interested in reasonable measures, I can support this. The military may have the fully automatic M4 in common use, but soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines do not purchase their own M4, nor do they get to take them home at night. The government retains possession of these arms and the various servicemen and women only acquire them while directly acting as an agent of the government.
This is not so with what you term the military style AR-15. If it must be termed at all, a more accurate determination would be the civilian or police style rifle. The AR-15 platform is semi-automatic, and not select-fire or fully automatic. Nearly all military style rifles are now fully automatic.
In many cases the officers in a law enforcement agency are able to purchase their own sidearm and rifle from a list of approved vendors and styles, and use it for their job. This firearm is then their personal property. They take it home at night. Allowing an agent of the government at any level the personal ownership of an arm or category of arms not available to the general public would almost certainly violate the second amendment.
Instead of this waste of tax revenue, I urge you to instead help direct these funds into measures to improve the mental health reporting to the NICS database that should have prevented the Virginia Tech killer from legally purchasing handguns.
I urge you to direct these moneys to the school boards to increase physical security at our schools. Every single public school in my neighborhood is an open grounds. There are no fences restricting access to paths that are easily monitored and controlled. The Jewish Day School at (insert Address here) demonstrates an effective physical security plan that doesn't make the school look like a prison, and could be a model for the rest of our schools.
I urge you to direct these moneys to increased support organizations for those people finding the transition from a child to an independent adult difficult. So many of the people committing these atrocities are mentally disturbed and lost making that transition from a child in their parents home on their parents' income to an individual on their own going to higher education, or failing to do so.
