MNGunTalk.com

Is an extremist myth keeping U.S. policymakers from agreeing on reasonable gun safety measures that could help to reduce the seemingly endless bloodletting in America?

That was the proposition laid out by U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin during a standing room-only presentation last week in Ely.

Raskin, who taught constitutional law for 25 years prior to his election to Congress, was challenging what’s known as the “insurrectionist theory” of the Second Amendment, a view which Raskin describes as National Rifle Association “dogma.” According to Raskin, it’s a view that has consistently undermined efforts to protect the public from high-powered weaponry in the hands of extremists or the mentally ill, despite the overwhelming public support for common sense laws such as mandatory background checks and red flag provisions.

For most of the nation’s history, the Supreme Court has held that the rights conferred by the Second Amendment were within the confines of a militia, and that it did not confer an individual right to gun ownership. That changed in 2008, when a conservative-dominated Supreme Court found for the first time in District of Columbia v. Heller that the amendment did include an individual right to gun ownership for lawful purposes, such as self-protection within one’s home.