I pledge resistance to the flag of the AR-15s of America, and to the mythology for which it stands. Wounded nation under Fox, indefensible, with liberty and justice for some.

In the summer of 2008, the Supreme Court decided District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to gun ownership… Justice Scalia’s majority opinion held that [it] protected an individual right to keep a usable handgun at home… Justice Stevens argued that [its] protections extended only to firearm ownership in conjunction with service in a “well-regulated militia,” in the words of the Second Amendment… Nothing in Heller casts doubt on the permissibility of background check laws… Heller also gives the government at least some leeway to restrict the kinds of firearms that can be purchased… Most of the obstacles to gun regulations are political and policy based, not legal… because of an unduly expansive reading of Heller.

(Kate Shaw and John Bash, “We Clerked for Justices Scalia and Stevens. America Is Getting Heller Wrong,” NYTimes, 5-31-22)

…A violent society ought… to regard its handiwork… I myself would like politicians to view [the Uvalde photographs]: to look — really look — at the shattered face of what was previously a child and to then contemplate the bewildered terror of her last moments on earth. But that would not mean that the jig is up. People, not photographs, create political change….

(Susie Linfield, “Should We Be Forced to See Exactly What an AR-15 Does to a 10-Year-Old?” NYTimes, 3-31-22)

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