WASHINGTON — Never much known for restraint, Joe Biden did not hold back during a presidential primary debate in 2007 when a voter asking about gun rights in a recorded video displayed a fearsome-looking semiautomatic rifle and declared, ‘‘This is my baby.’’
Biden, then a Delaware senator in a dark-horse bid for the White House, shook his head. ‘‘I tell you what, if that’s his baby, he needs help,’’ he said. ‘‘I think he just made an admission against self-interest. I don’t know if he’s mentally qualified to own that gun.’’
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I hope this will become a central issue in the upcoming special senatorial campaign. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger characterized the lunatic interpretation of the Second Amendment championed by current Justice Scalia (Scott Brown's favorite guy) as "one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime." His clear-headed interpretation of the Second Amendment is found here (http://www.guncite.com/burger.html).
It seems to me that a reasonable understanding of the First Amendment makes the notion of a populace freely assembling to petition their government, armed to the teeth with assault weapons, to be lunatic. The goal of the Founding Fathers was not to create a modern day Lebanon or Syria or Pakistan, stocked with private militias or individual crazies, roaming the countryside. The First Amendment sought to create a country where peace and freedom are the hallmarks, not AK-47s or Bushwackers.